It's already been a very busy year for the team at Bristol Biomedical Simulation.
In January, we contributed to an online discussion with students on the MSc in Simulation Based Education at University of Staffordshire, kindly invited by Mandy Wilford.
In February, Dr Majda Bakali represented Bristol with a presentation at Morocco Sim 2025 in Oujda.
Our first large-group session using our newly-adopted platform AIBODY (AIBODY.IO) ran in February, teaching 280 medical students the mechanisms of control of mean arterial pressure. Feedback was excellent.
In April, we descended on Porto for SPSim 2025, with Dr Richard Helyer giving a keynote on Mass Training Using Virtual Patients. This, together with Prof. Willem van Meurs' inaugural symposium was an excellent event. At the same time, we reviewed a trial run of the 'Bristol Method' delivered by the Porto team, ready for their roll-out to second-year medical students in May.
In May, we cemented our relationship with AIBODY.IO, presenting a workshop at the Physiological Society Teaching Meeting 2025 on the use of their virtual physiology platform.
But the main event in May was the birth of a daughter Evelyn Anne to our wonderful specialist technician Katherine Harrison and her partner Mark. We were also pleased to welcome Yana Kovacheva as Kat's very able maternity cover.
In June, Dr Richard Helyer travelled to South Carolina, USA courtesy of AIBODY.IO and Palmetto InnovaSphere to show how the virtual physiology platform can be used in healthcare education. We held two workshops at Greenville Technical College and Spartanburg Community College attended by numerous educators and stakeholders, and enjoyed superb hospitality. And it was great to reunite with our friend SImon Walls, consultant in medical simulators.
We also attended in June the advisory board meeting of DonateForDefib Weston-super-Mare, meeting the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Somerset, and receiving cerificates to recognise our contribution. A video of our simulation of AED use has already been used in community education.
Then to Valencia, Spain for SESAM 2025 to present a poster on our use of iRISHealthcare StudentSim by biomedical sciences undergraduates, another on automatic patient generation with Prof. Willem van Meurs, a workshop with AIBODY.IO, and meeting friends old and new.
Next up are some vacations, including a super trip to Bordeaux and the Pyrenees as a guest of Prof. Willem van Meurs, with only a small amount of shop-talk.
Soon we head to Frankfurt and Löwenstein, Germany to the IUPS 2025 symposium and teaching satellite for a collaborative workshop with AIBODY.IO.
Ongoing projects include application of Virtus Tech to our teaching scenarios, a very interesting upcoming project with Frederico Lorenzo Barra and iRIS on AI scenario generation, and helping further centres adopt our method for teaching physiology. And watch this space for a full paper, a SIMZINE article and other developments.
What have we forgotten?!