MED1stMR: Mixed Reality to Enhance Training of Medical First Responder]{MED1stMR: Mixed Reality to Enhance the Training of Medical First Responders for Challenging Contexts

Mass-casualty incidents with a large number of injured persons caused by human-made or by natural disasters are increasing globally. In such situations, medical first responders (MFRs) need to perform diagnosis, basic life support, or other first aid to help stabilize victims and keep them alive to wait for the arrival of further support. Situational awareness and effective coping with acute stressors is essential to enable first responders to take appropriate action that saves lives. Virtual Reality (VR) has been demonstrated in several domains to be a serious alternative, and in some areas also a significant improvement to conventional learning and training. Especially for the challenges in the training of MFRs, it can be highly useful for practicing and learning domains where the context of the training is not easily available. VR training offers controlled, easy-to-create environments that can be created and trained repeatedly under the same conditions. As an advanced alternative to VR, Mixed Reality (MR) environments have the potential to augment current VR training by providing a dynamic simulation of an environment and hands-on practice on injured victims. Building on this interpretation of MR, the main aim of MED1stMR is to develop a new generation of MR training with haptic feedback for enhanced realism. in this workshop paper, we will present the vision of the project and suggest questions for discussion.