Virtual Booth

Surgical skills are fundamental to medical training, requiring students to practice with various tools and materials, including scalpel blades and skin training pads. Traditionally, skin training pads have been made from animal tissues such as chicken trunks, wings, thighs, beef tripe, and chicken legs. However, these materials are highly perishable, posing challenges for long-term use. Alternative training materials, including plastic, silicone, and polymers, tend to be expensive, difficult to reuse, and complex to prepare, while foam and sponge materials are prone to tearing. To address these limitations, this study introduces an advanced smart medical training set featuring wireless scalpel blades and a self-healing natural rubber pad utilizing ionic crosslinks. By modifying the controlled crosslinking process of natural rubber, this innovative approach creates a durable, self-healing pad suitable for use in a new electrical surgical training device. The smart material pad is designed to be cost-effective and easy to prepare. Its effectiveness is demonstrated through self-ionic crosslinking, where the rubber sheet exhibits increased crosslinking over time following a scalpel incision. Additionally, the electrical surgical component activates a sound when the scalpel blade cuts into the self-healing pad and contacts an embedded sensor, enhancing its functionality for medical training applications.