i3 Nucleus
Empowering Clinicians with AI-Driven, No-Code VR Simulation Authoring
Role
Product Design
Duration
May 2024 - March 2025
Tools
Figma, ShapesXR, UE 5
Team
Asif Moideen
Rajat Kumar
Introduction
Context
Medical simulation training is a critical component of healthcare education, yet it remains hindered by significant logistical barriers. Existing methods are extremely time-consuming, resource-intensive, and often require expensive, specialized hardware. While Virtual Reality (VR) offers a compelling, immersive alternative, its widespread adoption in clinical settings is blocked by high technical overhead, cost, and a frustrating communication gap between clinical subject matter experts (SMEs) and third-party development teams.
Challenge
How might we design a platform that empowers clinicians to autonomously create, customize, and deploy complex, high-fidelity, and medically accurate VR training simulations quickly and affordably, without writing a single line of code?
Goal
Simplify complex simulation creation process & knowledge capture
Modeling Physiology
Enabling non-programmers to define patient state using a comprehensive mathematical model of the human body.
Environment Setup:
Allowing easy, visual manipulation of 3D environments and assets
AI Assistant
Utilizing VUI for complex steps, defining rules for assessment and natural language inputs for logic and orchestration of workflow.
Outcome
Over the period of 12 months we designed and implemented a desktop authoring application built on Unreal Engine that supports VR deployment through a centralized hub and dedicated VR app.
Discover & Define
Market Research
Total
US
$3.2 trillion
UK
£269 billion
Europe
€1.221 trillion
Per Capita
US
$10,623
UK
£3,177
Europe
€4,348
US
UK
Europe
0
3
4
2
5
6
5.8
3.9
2.6
These figures suggest that the US market is highly lucrative but also competitive, while the UK and European markets present significant opportunities for cost-effective, scalable training solutions like i3 Nucleus.
433,240
Medical Students
across the US, UK, and Europe.
11,728,708
CPD Trainees globally, indicating a large market for continuous professional development (CPD) training
757
867 Simulation Centres globally, with 757 in the US, showing a high concentration of existing infrastructure, particularly in the US
XR healthcare simulation market
This growth is driven by
Increasing Focus on Patient Safety.
Technological Advancements in XR.
Rising Demand for Effective Training.
XR healthcare simulation market
Key Challenges
High Costs of Simulation.
Limited Funds for Adoption.
Complexity in Replicating Real-Life Scenarios.
1
Standardisation
There’s a critical need for a standardized platform to assess simulations
2
Pilot Studies
A shortage of resources for robust testing
3
Integration
seamless integration with existing educational platforms
Primary Users
Clinicians, simulation technicians, healthcare institutions
Secondary Users
Medical students
User research
To ensure the design directly addressed clinical needs and anticipated resistance, we conducted targeted UX research with healthcare professionals. Our interviews with end-user identified critical factors driving the design strategy.
The Content-Creation Gap: The primary struggle was the inability for clinical experts (SMEs) to translate their deep medical knowledge directly into simulation content without relying on slow, expensive technical development teams. This validated the need for a No-Code Authoring approach.
Skepticism Validation: VR skepticism typically falls into two categories:
Bad First Impression: Users exposed to low-quality experiences.
Lack of Realism: Users felt VR didn't replicate enough of the real world to be useful.
The Importance of Trust: When choosing a solution, accreditation and partnership with reputable organizations carry significant weight.
Synthesis & Analysis
Reduce barrier: Cost & effort involved in authoring (development cycle) and updating the scenarios
Interrupted non-linear workflows: Clinicians do not have consistent time, need to finish the scenario in a short time or across different intervals.
Improve knowledge capture: SME knowledge regarding alternative approaches and insights gained during traditional simulations are not translated into software tools.
High level Process
Working with product stakeholders & developers, a high level process was created comparing task flow of traditional simulation creation and VR development cycle. Scenario mapping and was also carried out to identify design ideas and considerations
Defining Scope
Develop & Deliver
Information architecture
The IA for i3 nucleus was iterated upon by mirroring simulation creation process and ensuring the emerging userflow provides efficient knowledge capture
Designing for simplified steps
Over several sprints, the steps for authoring a simulation scenarios were simplified and refined.
VR Library
A spatial UI interface was designed to support browsing the simulation library, settings and hosting multiplayer sessions
Impact
2 weeks
i3 nucleus simulation creation time
12-21 weeks
Previous simulation creation time
POC: Internal testing has shown a reduction of simulation creation time to 2 weeks for new scenarios wit supported scenarios being completed in under 30mins.
Focus Group: Initial version of the product with scenarios like anaphylaxis has received positive feedback from end users
Further development: i3 Nucleus is under development for expanding physiological models to scale scenario creation and enter user trials.
