The Virtual Maternity Unit which I built (and Fay Cross scripted) for Jenny Bailey, Academic Division Midwifery, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Physiotherapy at the University of Nottingham, has received the Philips Avent Award for Innovation in Midwifery from the Royal College of Midwifery.
A press release went out on Friday the 20th. Look for 'Click here for the full story,' where Jenny describes the sim in greater detail, or view the full press release on the MIDIRS site.
Meanwhile, I have edited my PowerPoint presentation for the demonstration on the VMU I gave at the IRVW2011 conference, and you can now see it on SlideShare.
The poster I created to describe the VMU for AltC 2010 likewise won the Best Poster Competition, as voted by conference delegates.
Another poster along the same lines went with Jenny Bailey and Bob Hallawell to the Net11 conference.
A lot of work went into the creation of the Virtual Maternity Unit, so I will be following up with a review of the build while it was under development. The PP presentation on SlideShare covers some of this. I can personally attest to the immersive nature of the simulation, as I had to test the birth mother's avatar skin as I was making it, as well as test and tweak the animations and poses while in progress. There is nothing like having folks [virtually] walk in on you when you are [virtually] draped (clothed) over a birthing ball and ask "What are you Doing?" to give a sense of truly 'being there.' Oh, if avatars could blush.