Tim sat down with Carla Bond, Founder and CEO of UpSkill VR, to discuss the transformative role that virtual reality is playing in emergency training. Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) kills 1 person every 2 minutes in the United States, and 70% of SCAs happen at home. But did you know your chance of survival increases 45% when CPR is administered promptly?! UpSkill VR uses VR to help students, EMTs, and communities prepare for emergency situations, rooted in Carla’s own personal experience. She shares her personal experience as an EMT, including a story where she arrived at a call and found an infant in need of help and the surprising realization that led Carla to founding the company. We dive into the details of her journey as an entrepreneur, her target market, ideal partners and end users, and what's next for UpSkill beyond CPR. Here are some of the key takeaways from the episode:

“When you think about a traditional CPR class, you’re in a controlled environment and you’re playing essentially with a doll, of course they are manikins, but it's a torso. So the first thing you’re not going to encounter out in the real world is a torso and a head that needs CPR, and there is nothing else going on. So me showing up to calls; to summarize, I showed up to a call that really was a catalyst for me, I showed up to a call where according to the mother who had been a nurse for 20 years; so that’s at least 10 CPR classes that she sat through, but when we got there, he was still wedged between the tub and the toilet. It was not that she did not have the education to do it, she did not have that emotional tie to be able to take what she used in the class room and bring it to real life, and that’s where VR came in. “

“Our perfect candidate is people who are professionals in the healthcare space, who are typically 1. Required to have it, since they are doing it anyway, and 2. Students who are going into the healthcare field, whether they are in highschool or college. We want to be there before you hit the clinic or hospital, so by the time that you get your first job, you’ve had endless amounts of practice on the most realialistic scenarios possible so we don’t have doctors passing out at the first sign of arterial blood or EMTs having those difficult calls. We can out them in there ahead of time and expirence it. This weeds out a lot of darkness, because you don’t really know how you’re going to respond, but if I out you in VR, I can pretty much tell you how you are going to respond. With our experiences, we track your heart rate, so I can tell you when you got scared, and I can tell you when you got out of breath. It’s like flight simulation, we want you to screw it up with us, not with anyone else.”

Are you a healthcare innovator? Tell us what topics and people you’d like us to cover in future episodes:

“Upskill VR is excited to be pitching this year at the annual DC Startup Week Early-Stage Pitch Competition next week on Friday, September 16th at Convene sponsored by Sands Capital!! DC Startup Week is the largest event in the DC area for entrepreneurs and startups! 🎉.” Carla Bond on LinkedIn

“Meet the winners of DC Startup Week’s annual pitch competition! Ten finalists competed at DC Startup Week's closing event, split between early- and growth-stage groups. Here are the winners.” Read the full article on Technical.ly (September, 2022)

Tim Fitzpatrick is the CEO of IKONA Health, a company using neurobiology and immersive technology to improve how patients learn about their care and treatment options. Tim co-founded IKONA based on his own patient experiences while serving in the US Navy and now in the VA health system. He has served as Principal Investigator on multiple federal research grants, has co-authored papers on learning science, VR, and mental health in the age of COVID-19, and has partnered with top healthcare investors and institutions including the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, National Artificial Intelligence Institute, StartUp Health, On Deck, FundRx, MATTER and NVIDIA.

T-Minus 10 is a part of the Slice of Healthcare podcast network.