Design of a Human Centered Computing (HCC) based Virtual Reality Simulator to train First Responders Involved in the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed an overwhelming strain on our Nation's ability to treat patients; the number of patients who need to be tested continues to rise. With nurses also becoming infected, the number of trained professionals who can perform tasks such as testing of patients along with providing care involving hooking up patients to ventilators continues to decrease as well. There is a need to explore the adoption of virtual computer-based training mediums which will enable new nurses and others to be trained in safe and efficient procedures involving patients during this pandemic period. In this paper, the design of a VR-based simulator based on Human-Centered Computing (HCC) principles are discussed. The role of HCC factors such as affordance and cognitive load on the comprehension and scene understanding of nurses during training and the acquisition of knowledge of safety procedures and detailed steps (pertaining to nasal sample collection and use of ventilators on patients) has been studied with the involvement of nurse and nurse trainee participants. Adoption of a participatory design approach involving experts (nurses, doctors involved in covid-19 testing and treatment) has provided a foundational basis for the design of the training environments and assessment activities. Formal information-centric process models of the nasal swabbing procedures and ventilator hookup tasks were created using the engineering Enterprise Modeling Language (eEML). The preliminary results from the assessment activities indicate the positive impact of such HCC based 3D simulators in such training of first responders.