The Valley Hospital Welcomes Hal, a New Simulation Robot

On Jun 17, 2024

The Valley Hospital’s simulation center in Paramus has become the first hospital in New Jersey and New York to take delivery of a new adult manikin called HAL S5301, or Hal for short, manufactured by Gaumard. Hal is a high-fidelity, full-body manikin, meaning it has the ability to mimic human functions.

Significant features include artificial intelligence-driven conversational speech, which allows for life-like conversations between provider and patient, and the ability to follow limited assessment-driven voice commands, including lift arm, look left, look right, squeeze hand, and close and open eyes (both or individually).

Designed for training purposes to represent a potential patient, Hal can emulate high-risk conditions, such as stroke, by displaying facial droop and extremity motor function deficit. Hal can also exhibit seizure-like activity, which presents with gaze and tonic-clonic extremity movement, seen when muscles stiffen and jerk.

Hal offers training in several care areas, including intubation and placement on a ventilator; chest tube placement; vital sign monitoring, including manual and non-invasive blood pressure, pulse oximeter, exhaled end-tidal carbon dioxide (ETCO2) monitoring, blood glucose monitoring, and electrocardiograms (EKG); and more.

“Hal’s significant capabilities complement traditional high-fidelity simulator functionality, presenting staff with an interactive training experience,” said James Warin, MPA, NRP, MICP, CHSE, simulation operations specialist for The Valley Hospital. “This functionality creates training scenarios of varying levels of complexity, depending on the desired goals and objectives.”

Hal is replacing SimMan, Valley’s previous adult simulator, which was used for employee training at Valley for over a decade. Hal was purchased using donor funds.

“Hal will continue to support Valley’s mission of simulation to increase confidence and competence, and improve patient outcomes,” said Warin. “Hal will be used throughout The Valley Hospital, whether it be for nurse orientation, competencies, mock codes, simulated stroke or STEMI cases, and to build assessment skills.”

“Most notably, this powerful tool will be utilized to train the residents of Valley’s Graduate Medical Education (GME) Program, who will join Valley’s team in early July,” said Warin. “We look forward to years of quality simulation-based education at The Valley Hospital supported by Hal.”

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