HUNTSVILLE, AL – June 2023 – Clarus Viewer Corporation and the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) College of Nursing are excited to announce its collaboration in advancing medical technologies. Clarus Viewer Corporation is a Huntsville-based MedTech company bringing digital engineering to digital healthcare through its Clarus Viewer product. Revolutionizing medical imagery through 3D visualization, Clarus Viewer is a software solution created using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to allow users to visualize and manipulate 2D images and 3D models of patients in Virtual Reality (VR). Within the tool, users can examine and slice the generated 3D models to see details like structure, tissue, and fluids to better understand and visualize conditions.

“Our nursing program doesn’t shy away from new tech advancements—we welcome it with open arms,” said Dr. Karen Frith, Dean of the College of Nursing at UAH. “I believe that technology in nursing should be collaborative, not competitive between tech and human-factor. We need to help nurses learn how to be a part of technology development and give them opportunities to provide early feedback. Our faculty works really hard to give our students opportunities like this to engage with cutting-edge technologies—we are thrilled to collaborate with Clarus Viewer.”

Clarus Viewer Corporation hosted a Formative Evaluation with UAH nursing students for its new Clarus Viewer: Trainer^TM application. Clarus Viewer: Trainer is a training aid for healthcare students and instructors. It allows users to present, view, manipulate, and analyze 3D models of real medical imagery alongside idealized 3D models of human anatomy. During the two-day study, UAH nursing students and professors tested the training tool and provided feedback to the development team.

“Early feedback from the end-users is critical to the success of Clarus Viewer Trainer, and the feedback we received from the UAH nursing program will be instrumental in our next development phase,” said Cayla Garrett, BSN, RN, Clarus Viewer Lead Market Developer and Medical Liaison. “Not only were we able to solidify that our product has the potential to improve the learning experience for nurses of the future, but it also helped us identify barriers of implementation and new areas of growth.”

Dr. Frith, with over 30 years of teaching experience, added, “We want more and more opportunities, like this, for our students so that they are better prepared to engage when they enter the workforce. Whether it’s a process that needs to be improved, technology itself, or maybe its just a workflow within their organization; anything that creates a “questioning-mind” is good for our students. Clarus Viewer does just that.”

“As a Registered Nurse and a graduate of the UAH nursing program, I can proudly say the faculty and staff of UAH’s nursing program is ahead of the curve— always open to new technologies and evolving its curricula proactively for the increasing use of digital technologies,” said Garrett. “Together, industry and academia must create educational opportunities at the undergraduate and graduate levels in digital health and data science. Through this Formative Evaluation of Clarus Viewer: Trainer, we were able to give nursing students the opportunity to test and develop a new potential training tool for their program and allow them to work with and learn from computing, engineering, and other interdisciplinary fields.”

Clarus Viewer: Trainer envisions more than just a virtual experience and is focused on bridging the gap between traditional book learning and patient care.

ABOUT CLARUS VIEWER CORPORATION:

Scan imagery for some patients with complex cases or irregular anatomy can be difficult to analyze and evaluate with traditional 2D viewers. Clarus Viewer® is a software solution created using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to allow users to visualize and manipulate 2D images and 3D models of patients in Virtual Reality (VR). The new Clarus Viewer: Trainer^TM application is a training aid for healthcare students and instructors. It allows users to present, view, manipulate, and analyze 3D models of real medical imagery alongside idealized 3D models of human anatomy. The development of Clarus Viewer: Trainer is supported through Clarus Viewer being named an Epic MegaGrant recipient, which has accelerated the innovative methods of Clarus Viewer for medical image visualization and collaborative analysis to advance Digital Healthcare using technologies from Digital Engineering.

For more information about this topic, please contact Cayla Garrett at 256.975.0445 or email at cayla.garrett@clarusviewer.com.