Our goal was to develop and strengthen the VR based digital competencies and cooperation of the participants, and to share the good practices with the wider community. Stakeholders were primarily interested in medical and STEM fields. During implementation, we aimed to attract and retain students, encouraging them towards practice-oriented education, using VR solutions. We believe that VR technology is a compelling and powerful e-learning method. While educating future biomedical engineers and specialists on STEM fields, it lets us create dynamic clinical environments, allowing an authentic approach for improvement in problem-based teaching. Based on research, we aimed to explore the possibilities that VR platforms can provide and critically evaluate IT solutions, for which the criteria included accessibility, sustainability, standardisation, feedback and data processing. Our aim was to establish VR based BSc, MSc and joint degree programs. In addition to benchmarking, getting experience about virtual learning and course development was among the goals. Possible collaboration using VR tools is important in STEM and medical education, therefore exploring the process of online, VR based project work has also been examined.
The lack of medical professionals impacts the workforce on several scientific fields worldwide. Stem skills combined with medical training results in the field of biomedical engineering, generating solutions for multidisciplinary medical issues, targeting healthcare professionals, who use their expertise to use novel technical solutions, e.g., VR technology, which proved to be effective and interactive method for education offering unique, modular training environment for various situations. Preliminary analyses of scientific literature showed that PhD, part-time and joint degree programs were not extensively developed in VR before, despite its advantages. We expect that VR-based distance education can be useful for skill development in practical medical and stem education. An innovative and accessible tool was inevitably needed to enhance interdisciplinary project work. The needs have been defined in terms of digital transformation to reshape distance education using innovative technologies and good practices. Our aim was to strengthen the local and international ecosystem and to support knowledge transfer between partnering hospitals, start-ups, universities and broad audiences by improving VR/AR usage in healthcare education.