West Michigan-based Dr. Jihad A. Mustapha of the ACV Centers has teamed up with the MedTech software company, Immertec, to offer physicians the opportunity to observe and learn from his procedures through virtual reality. ACV Centers provides care for patients with Peripheral Artery Disease and the complications of Critical Limb Ischemia.
“PAD patients or CLI patients are really, really dear to my heart because these are the patients that get neglected,” said Mustapha. “Especially racial disparity, African American, Hispanics, they don’t get the care they need.”
Patients with CLI typically have a lifespan of five years or less and seldom have to go through amputations, which significantly increase the chance of death. Mustapha has made it a goal to build awareness about the treatment and therapy options available to prevent amputations.
“There’s not a lot of operators that can perform surgery on these patients, and our goal is to increase that number,” he added. “Before COVID, we used to train about 250 physicians that came through our centers, and with COVID, we aren’t able to do this.”
To continue delivering the education, he teamed up with Immertec to develop a program that could help virtually facilitate the training.
“This technology now allows physicians to be anywhere in the country or in the world and be able to have an eagle and see everything that you’re looking at here. Almost 7 points. They can see the ultrasound, they can see the angiogram, my hands, and we can also communicate at the same time.”
The technology enables the doctors to watch the procedures from anywhere and put on the VR headset to help physicians perform a procedure in real-time.
The first VR training was conducted on January 26, earlier this year. ACV Centers and Immertec aim to host ongoing training initiatives and impact hundreds of physicians over the ongoing year.
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