Low-cost, take-home, beating heart simulator for health-care education

Abstract

Intended for medical students studying the evaluation and diagnosis of heart arrhythmias, the beating heart arrhythmia simulator combines visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli to enhance the student's retention of the subtle differences between various conditions of the heart necessary for diagnosis. Unlike existing heart arrhythmia simulators, our simulator is low cost and easily deployable in the classroom setting. A design consisting of solenoid actuators, a silicon heart model, and a graphical user interface has been developed and prototyped. Future design development and conceptual validation is necessary prior to deployment.