The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Living Lab receives  state funding boost

Teaching nurse Patricia Burnell works with Nat, the teatherless mannequin who is a teaching tool at Graceworks Lutheran Services Living Lab. Nat is controlled by a laptop computer and mimics human activity like sleeping, talking, breathing, bleeding and accepting CPR.

Staff photo by Ty Greenlees Teaching nurse Patricia Burnell works with Nat, the teatherless mannequin who is a teaching tool at Graceworks Lutheran Services Living Lab. Nat is controlled by a laptop computer and mimics human activity like sleeping, talking, breathing, bleeding and accepting CPR.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Teatherless mannequins controlled by laptop computers at Graceworks Lutheran Services Living Lab are teaching tools for nurses.

Staff photo by Ty Greenlees Teatherless mannequins controlled by laptop computers at Graceworks Lutheran Services Living Lab are teaching tools for nurses.

ENLARGE PHOTO

CompuNet plans for tomorrow in field rife with challenges
9/4/10
Ohio’s first hydrogen station to open soon in Miami Valley
4:31 p.m.
Local company promotes alternative fuel packages
9/4/10
Fossil fuels may soon be history
9/4/10
HBS plans a second project at Indian Lake
9/4/10
> More headlines

Pratik Desai holds a hard hat fitted with radio transceiver. The transceiver is part of a 3-D wireless sensor network system he and Dr. Kuldip Rattan are testing at the Graceworks Lutheran Services Living Lab in Centerville. The 3-D network has the potential to assist independent elderly people if they become incapacitated, by alerting monitors if they fall.

Staff photo by Ty Greenlees Pratik Desai holds a hard hat fitted with radio transceiver. The transceiver is part of a 3-D wireless sensor network system he and Dr. Kuldip Rattan are testing at the Graceworks Lutheran Services Living Lab in Centerville. The 3-D network has the potential to assist independent elderly people if they become incapacitated, by alerting monitors if they fall.

Controlling board awards $473K to Bethany Village site for health-care research and education.

E-mail this page

By Ben Sutherly, Staff Writer Updated 5:41 PM Wednesday, March 24, 2010

CENTERVILLE — The state Controlling Board on Monday, March 22, released $473,000 in funding to further transform a house on the Bethany Village campus into a high-tech hub for health-care research and education for both professional and novice caregivers.

From a former bedroom of the house at 6457 Far Hills Ave., the Wright State University nursing faculty already can use computers to make human-like simulators cough or cry out in pain, manipulate their pulse, make their heart murmur, or respond to students’ questions about how they’re feeling.

The family of medical simulators — some bedridden, others dealing with various “health problems” — resemble department-store mannequins at first glance. But the most expensive of the six cost about $35,000, and that price doesn’t include extras.

The souped-up simulators are part of the “Living Laboratory,” a collaboration between Bethany Village’s parent, Graceworks Lutheran Services, and Wright State’s Nursing Institute of West Central Ohio, which has an annual budget of $370,000.

The lab’s goal: to teach nursing students and social workers how to care for patients, and family members how to care for loved ones at home.

The lab also is expected to be an incubator for technologies meant to help the elderly maintain their independence as long as possible. One project, for example, involves equipping the ceiling of the living room with a wireless sensor network made up of nine sensor beacons. The goal of the project, undertaken by doctoral students supervised by Wright State’s Dr. Kuldip Rattan, is to detect the three-dimensional orientation of anyone wearing a monitoring device.

“We can tell where the person is in the room, and then we can also tell whether the person is standing, sitting on the sofa or if the person is on the (floor),” Rattan said.

The 2-year-old project’s challenges are to develop a smaller monitoring device that’s easier for a person to wear, and to secure funding, Rattan said.

The Living Lab already has received more than $94,000 from the Department of Health and Human Services for human simulators.

The $473,242 in funding approved Monday comes from the higher education capital fund. That money will pay for additional technology for the Living Lab, including a work-force tracking system that ultimately could prove useful in a hospital or nursing-home environment, and a system that tracks how students interact with simulators. The funding also will pay for five more simulators.

Historically, most training has focused on preparing nurses to provide care in a hospital or nursing-home setting, not in the patient’s home, said Patti Burnell, the Institute’s simulation education director.

“There’s really been a gap in the education spectrum,” Burnell said. “We want to hit the entire spectrum.”

Keeping an aging population independent for as long as possible complements the goals of Graceworks, which provides a full spectrum of care, including independent living, said the Rev. James Bosse, Graceworks’ vice president for community and organizational care.

“As the population ages and we are a society that turns more to self-care, the baby boomers want to know how to take care of themselves,” said Debi Sampsel, the Nursing Institute’s executive director.

Share this article