High-Tech Training Center and Public-Private Partnership To Address Nursing Shortage, Improve Clinical Education
Rocky Mountain PBS is partnering with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center to provide state of the art, innovative technologies to enhance the education of allied health professionals. A simulation center being built at the Health Sciences Center called the WELLS center will provide:
- State-of-the-art patient simulation resources: both computer-driven mannequins that mimic real patient reactions, and the Visible Human Dissector™, developed by the University of Colorado Health Sciences Simulation Center, a cutting-edge interactive computer program for virtual anatomy and dissection.
- Simulated operating room and emergency room, allowing students to practice surgical techniques and critical care activities, and prepare for emergency situations.
In a unique technology partnership, Rocky Mountain PBS will make the Center’s technologies available to students around the state through the use of high-speed digital datacasting transmissions. Datacasting technology will support real time transmission of training sessions and online simulations to classrooms, homes or office computers.
Rocky Mountain PBS has created the infrastructure in its convergence to digital television to be able to send video, audio and any data through its airwaves directly to computers. Because of the size of the bandwidth, datacasting is more efficient that the Internet, and the number of users receiving the signal at any one time does not effect the quality of the signal.
The WELLS Center and the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment can use this datacasting to send live broadcasts, reports, speeches, demonstrations and other messages to their clients and students, without the need for broadband access. In addition any other asynchronous files, i.e. online courses, video/graphics associated with those courses, large media rich files can be sent to computers in the schools, offices, and hospitals where allied professionals are being trained.
In addition, Rocky Mountain PBS will be installing datacast receive equipment in various workforce one-stop centers around the state, so that CDLE can provide training to the desk top of clients and staff in these centers.
