- GSA MSc student’s research highlights ease of contamination transfer
- Hope that a newly created App will help with training for infection control practices which is especially important in the light of the current Covid-19 pandemic
- Project will be showcased in the GSA’s Postgraduate Showcase 2020 which launches with a digital platform today, 19 August 2020
Eve Gibbons, an MSc student in the School of Simulation and Visualisation at The Glasgow School of Art, has developed an App with a series of interactive simulations that demonstrate the ease of germ transfer, it was revealed today (insert date).
The aim of the project is to raise awareness about unconscious behaviours that can potentially trigger contaminations between individuals and their environment, which is especially important in the context of the Coronavirus.
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| self-contamination of the mask with visible contamination; |
“I was inspired to undertake this project by the statistics around the misuse of PPE,” explains Eve, a Biology graduate who was attracted to study for an MSc in Medical Visualisation & Human Anatomy by an interest in harnessing new technologies to support medical practice. “Violations in protocol usually occur through subconscious mistakes such as adjusting the face mask with unclean hands and gloves.”
“They are much more frequent than you would expect,” she adds. “Coupled with the invisible aspect of contamination, it’s easy to forget that even the smallest of actions can have a big impact.”
“Even looking beyond the use of PPE among healthcare staff, with the recent mandatory use of face masks in public, it’s evident that even with the best of intentions, the unfamiliarity with masks and people being misinformed, mistakes are common which can, unknowingly, help spread of the virus. When you are forced to see contamination in a tangible and interactive way, it’s much more real,”
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| spot test for mask protocol |
Eve hopes that the prototype App can be further developed as an educational tool for people working and wearing PPE.
“I would hope that the development of the App might have a real benefit for those using PPE on the front-line in ultimately raising awareness of how easily cross-contamination occurs and the importance of it in not only stemming the spread of COVID-19, but infection control practises in general.”
Emerging technologies have the potential to make a significant impact in the medical sphere. Eve’s main supervisor, Dr Matthieu Poyade of the GSA has recently been working on AMRSim, a major Antimicrobial Resistance research project led by the GSA’s Professor Alastair Macdonald, which visualises the spread of pathogens in small animal vet practice.
“In the current context of global pandemic, it is crucial to find ways to raise awareness about unconscious behaviours in order to promote behavioural changes among healthcare workers and the public,” says Dr. Matthieu Poyade “As mobile devices are nowadays widely owned interfaces able to render complex animated graphics, there is an opportunity to create new informative channels of communication across the society.”
Eve has also been working closely with Dr David Fitzpatrick, Senior Lecturer in Health Sciences at the University of Stirling University, a paramedic with 25-years of frontline experience with the Scottish Ambulance Service.
“Before the outbreak of COVID-19, the use of additional personal protective equipment (PPE) – such as aprons and face masks – was relatively infrequent in pre-hospital care. As the pandemic evolved, training and education on PPE was enhanced for ambulance clinicians, however, we know that breaches in the application and use of PPE can still occur,” says Dr Fitzpatrick
“This pilot study aimed to identify the common areas where infection control breaches involving PPE occur. With further development, this approach could support and improve ambulance clinicians’ knowledge and understanding and, in turn, lead to changes in behaviours and actions during their application and removal of PPE.”
“The rapid development of this easy-to-use app by Eve and her supervisors demonstrates what can be achieved with a collaborative approach involving experts from different specialisms and backgrounds.”
The MSc in Medical Visualisation & Human Anatomy at The Glasgow School of Art is delivered in partnership with the Anatomy department in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow, and is accredited by the Institute of Medical Illustrators. It stands as the interface between creative practice and advanced interactive computer graphics development at the service of medical communication.
What Not to Do with PPE will be featured on the GSA’s Postgraduate Showcase 2020 which will launch with a digital platform on 19 August. It will include work by over 250 students graduating from taught Masters Programmes.
Elsewhere in the School of Simulation and Visualisation Christian O’Brien, a student on the Serious Games and VR programme, has created a digital game as a tool of teaching Finger Spelling in American Sign Language (ASL).
“A lot of people don’t know about ASL and only start to learn if a member of the family needs to use it. Hand tracking in gaming offers a unique new experience which to my knowledge has yet to be applied to education.”
Christian O’Brien
A self-confessed VR enthusiast Christian started playing with hand tracking when he obtained an Oculus head set and began to wonder whether it could be used as a teaching mechanism.
Harnessing the potential of hand-tracking as an education tool Christian created a ASL Fingerspelling – a game that teaches a player the ASL alphabet.
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Note for Editors
Statistics on misuse of PPE
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29889934/ study on infection control behaviour; 87% of observations in a hospital over a 9 month period involved violations capable of causing self-contamination or transmission of infection occurred
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17898247/ 85.7% of emergency responders were unable to don and doff PPE in the correct order, just six months after training
https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(08)00376-9/fulltext in a pandemic simulation exercise in 2010, staff were lacking confidence in PPE use
Antimicrobial Resistance research at the GSA
The Glasgow School of Art has a strong record in research in the area AMR harnessing emerging technologies.
Professor Alastair Macdonald, senior researcher in the School of Design, has been leading ground-breaking research in the area. Through a series of AHRC grants he has led research projects in the area of infection prevention and control, and the development and evaluation of interactive digital training tools, using behavioural and microbial data as their basis
For AMRSim (a microbial reality simulator http://amrsim.org) his team, which included researchers at the University of Surrey, from the School of Simulation and Visualisation at the GSA and the leading veterinary practice, Fitzpatrick Referrals, developed and trialled a training intervention designed to change veterinary staff’s perception of the risk of bacterial contamination and, ultimately, their related behaviours. It comprises a digital tool, educational content, and an interactive mode of presentation and delivery. By ‘making the invisible, visible’ the ambition is to reduce bacterial contamination in small animal veterinary practices, reduce reliance on antibiotics, and contribute to decreasing the risk of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) developing.
The prior visionOn project produced a proof-of-concept tablet-based tool for hospital staff to improve awareness and understanding of the location, persistence and transmission of pathogens in the hospital ward environment.
Other AHRC funded AMR research includes RIPEN https://www.ripen.org.uk and work looking at the relationship between ventilation and AMR in homes