Medical education goes virtual at USF

TAMPA (FOX 13) - A new virtual reality teaching tool will soon allow pharmacology students at the University of South Florida to peek inside almost any organ in the body. Wearing special goggles, they can virtually get a 360-degree view of how organs function. 

Dr. Kevin Sneed, the dean of the College of Pharmacy, says the system will go into use this fall. "Really what put it together for me is what millennials want, what they're already used to and how they're learning.”

Launched last year, the Sharecare YOU program is also available for home use using Microsoft's HTC Vive headset. 

"They can learn in multiple platforms, where it might be at home, it might be in a library, it may be a Starbucks," continued Sneed. 

The menu lets you chose from a library of diseases, allowing you to see what they do to the body and how they are treated. "Now you can actually show how a stent is coming in and being placed."

To enhance the software's capabilities even more, USF is collaborating with its Sarasota-based programmers. They are hoping to show us how medications affect our organs -- an advancement Dr. Sneed envisions will help patients. 

"I think we'll be able to show them exactly what's going on in their body and why we want them to take medication."