Our Mixality team, surrounding Prof. Dr. Thies Pfeiffer and Jonas Blattgerste, is proud to announce that our “Heb@AR” app has been recognized at the nextReality.Contest in Hamburg, where it won the “Interactive Education” Award. The app aims to support the training of academic midwives through the use of practical Augmented Reality (AR) trainings. It was developed together with a team from the Hochschule für Gesundheit Bochum and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum over the past three years. The nextReality.Contest Award is one of the most prestigious national awards in the industry and recognizes the development of future technologies in Germany.
In addition to this latest award, the “Heb@AR App” has also previously won the “AVRiL Gold Award 2022” and was nominated for the XR Science Award 2022.
The “Heb@AR App” allows midwifery students to practice various procedures with a realistic representation of materials and situations, such as resuscitating a newborn, preparing a pregnant woman for a c-section or preparing specific medication. It can be used both, in SkillsLab situations at the university, but also at home as a self-determined retention opportunity. Early evaluations show promising results regarding its effectiveness in strengthening the skills of midwifery students and especially their self-efficacy, particularly in emergency situations. The app is currently used in several academic midwifery programs in Germany.
At the moment, we are working on expanding the app to include more interactive elements, opt-in tracking and self-reporting mechanisms for feedback and improvements, and to make it available in other languages (e.g., English). We are thrilled to have received the recognition with those nominations and awards, and look forward to continuing our work on the “Heb@AR App” in follow-up projects. One of these projects will be a cooperation with Univ. Prof. Dr. Claudia de Witt from Fernuniversität Hagen and the “Virtuellen Krankenhaus Nordrhein-Westfalen”.
Full press releases from the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer about both awards (in German), can be found: Here for the AVRiL 2022 Award and here for the nextReality.Contest “Interactive Education” Award. For more information about Project Heb@AR check out the project homepage hosted by the HS Gesundheit Bochum (in German) or our project Mixality Heb@AR page (in English).