The opening story in IT Outcomes 2020 described the launch of a state-of-the-art “Nursing Simulation Lab,” a space containing lifelike, computerized mannequins used by nursing students to get hands-on experience performing healthcare procedures. One of the Sim Lab’s student-friendly features is called “SimCapture,” which sends a video stream of lab activities to be viewed by faculty and students for evaluation. It quickly became a very valuable tool for everyone in the nursing program that used it.

Yet like many campus-related good things in 2020, a problem arose when COVID-19 struck the school and in-person classes had to be suspended. That was when the nursing students sent home to take remote classes made the disappointing discovery that SimCapture was only viewable on-campus.

IT and Nursing staff scrambled to set up an interim solution using Zoom and other technologies while a longer-term fix could be planned. Eventually, Rosemary Samia, Director for Clinical Education & Research in the School of Nursing, Mike Lyons, Assistant Vice Chancellor of Client Services, and Zack Ronald, Echo360 Administrator and Academic Technology Specialist, decided to make the transition to the Cloud. “Zack Ronald has always been a very big advocate and support to the lab,” said Samia of Ronald’s contributions. With the transition to the Cloud, students and faculty could access the service from home.

“We’re looking forward to being able to identify some trends about repetition for skill attainment and retention. It is bringing together clinical instructors with their students.”

Rosemary Samia, Director for Clinical Education & Research in the School of Nursing

Samia worked with many different groups in IT to complete the migration to the Cloud while keeping the nursing simulation lab in service. Lyons filled in as a temporary Sim Lab technician. He worked with Terence Phalen, Director of IT Project Management, and David Gorfine, the IT Project Manager for the job, to communicate with the vendor to perform upgrades to the lab. Samia also worked with Wil Khouri, Assistant Vice Chancellor and CISO, to ensure the security of SimCapture’s data in the Cloud. David Bonczar, Senior Information Security Architect, the Network Services team, and the Desktop Services team also worked to ensure security for this project.

The migration to the Cloud was completed in 2021. Students are now able to access SimCapture from home via an app, with a bonus of being able to get at-home practice on a “modular skills trainer” device, a portable unit that students can use from home to check their nursing competency skills.

Because SimCapture is hosted in the Cloud, all the students’ practice data is synced with the course for the appropriate faculty to view. According to Samia, this integration will be able to improve students’ learning experiences. “We’re looking forward to being able to identify some trends about repetition for skill attainment and retention,” said Samia. “It is bringing together clinical instructors with their students.”

“This is really cutting-edge technology in the nursing space,” Phalen was excited to add, “and so this is really a big deal to have this type of technology available for nursing students. There’s not a lot of labs like this in the country!”