The Interreg Aurora funded project Transforming Healthcare Education through XR and AI (XRHealthEdu) aims to revolutionise nursing education by integrating Extended Reality (XR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) into clinical learning environments and supervision. The project aims to provide nursing students and staff with immersive, interactive learning to enhance nursing skills, clinical decision-making, and readiness for modern healthcare. By bringing together expertise from Finland and Norway, the project fosters cross-border collaboration to drive innovation in healthcare education.
Anticipated outcomes include:
- Design and develop an XR-based curriculum with need-driven virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) modules that simulate clinical environments and patient interactions, covering key nursing competencies
- Create and customize XR and AI nursing simulations with adaptive learning for personalized need-based education and real-time feedback and assessment during the learning process, featuring 3D learning environments, AI-generated human avatars, and innovative supervision solutions in Finnish, Sámi, and Norwegian
- Integrate the XR-based curriculum and technology into real-world nursing education, assessing its impact on learning outcomes for students and newly graduated nurses
- Develop a protocol for demonstration and evaluation, along with pedagogical XR guidelines for healthcare education.
The project’s outcomes are expected to have a lasting impact on nursing education, offering scalable and sustainable solutions that can be adapted to various contexts and regions. By improving the quality and effectiveness of nursing education, the project contributes to the broader goal of enhancing healthcare quality and patient safety.
Contact: Kristina Mikkonen, project manager, University of Oulu, kristina.mikkonen@oulu.fi
