The Prince of Wales visits the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research

A three-year research project led by a University of Birmingham academic, working with colleagues from Goldsmiths and University College London, has indicated that virtual reality (VR) could become a vital tool for training General Practitioners (GPs) to look out for hard-to-detect signs of child abuse. In an article published today in 'Frontiers in Robotics and AI', which covers all theory and applications of robotics, technology, and artificial intelligence, a team of academics led by Professor Sylvie Delacroix , Professor in Law and Ethics at the University of Birmingham, sets out that VR has a very important role to play in helping GPs to further develop the wide range of intuitive and perceptual skills that are essential to their practice. While some of those skills can be taught pretty straightforwardly, others are harder to impart without the benefit of experience and role models. The ability to pick up signs that a child may be suffering from abuse at home is one of those skills that cannot easily be taught. The project looked at how an immersive virtual reality environment could address these challenges. Dr Sylvia Xueni Pan of Goldsmiths , University of London, led the development of an immersive virtual reality environment replicating a GP's surgery, where GP participants were able to interact with virtual, avatar patients in the same way as they would in a 'real' consultation. In the virtual scenario, the GP encountered a patient with a complex medical condition.