Event Description
Joe Rothschild, Virtual Reality Team Lead for CDC’s Training and Workforce Development Branch, takes you inside the brand new 50,000 square-foot OneLab virtual (VR) laboratory environment. Joe gives you a tour of some of the 12 different laboratories designed for clinical and public health laboratory training. He also shows how you can use a OneLab VR multiplayer component where clinical, public heath, and academic laboratory trainers can conduct live training on a variety of laboratory topics and invite their learners to join virtually.
Event Media
OneLab VR Walkthrough
Creativity and Insight to Laboratory Training Products.
He's considered an agency specialist in Section 508 and Virtual Reality.
He led the development of several firsts at CDC, the first Section 508 compliant Flash widget,
the first VR laboratory training course, the first e-learning syndication system, and the first Live
to Web microscope training webinar.
Through these firsts, Joe received numerous Innovation, Public Health Impact and Excellence in
Communication Impact awards.
He's originally from San Diego and received a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Design with an
emphasis in Media Arts from California State University, Chico.
I am excited to introduce Joe Rothschild to you.
Joe, please take it away.
All right!
Thank you very much, Blanche.
So good afternoon, all.
As Blanche said, my name's Joe Rothschild and I get the opportunity to take you all on a live
walkthrough of OneLab VR.
I'm not sure how many of you know about OneLab VR or who have had the opportunity to put
on a VR headset, and experiment with the environment, nor any of the currently released
training scenarios.
But for those of you who aren't familiar with OneLab or VR, you're in luck.
I'm gonna take you on a on a tour of the environments and then we're gonna jump into a
multiplayer session.
So, you could really get a sense of how you could use multiplayer laboratory training today in
VR.
So let me turn off my camera to prevent buffering and let me jump into... let me start casting.
Hold on just a second
Alright! Mic check, mic check
Let me get this streaming... alright...
OK, well, hey, welcome to the elevator of OneLab VR.
So, this is the area really where everyone starts.
It gives learners a chance to really sort of prepare mentally to enter the main OneLab VR area.
For first timers,
we're given a brief overview of the area and some background information on some of the
tasks and scenarios that are also provided with some key disclaimers.
So again, this is just a place where VR newbies can just sort of relax, get their feet under
them before beginning. If you want,
if you're a new person to VR, you can opt-in to taking a tutorial scenario which really sort of
teaches them how to navigate around in OneLab VR and eventually you reach your destination
the 4th floor of OneLab VR.
So, let's head on in.
So, this virtual facility really was hand built by the CDC VR team to act as a catch all for any type
of laboratory and laboratory training need we could think of that focus really on clinical and
public health laboratory professionals and really since we had that freedom, we started here in
the, what we're calling the OneLab VR lobby.
It was designed really to be a relaxing starting point again for VR users, but also serve as a
training area for staff new to laboratories.
As you can see, we take realism seriously and so we'll have to scan our badge here and walk
through here into the North Corridor. OneLab VR has a sterile yet attractive look.
For example, let's go into this walk-in refrigerator.
It has 3D spatial sound and was actually modeled after a real example that we looked at.
<<quiet sound of fan>>
We've added signage all over this environment for navigation and also just entry requirements
for labs.
So, we'll start with a specimen handling laboratory.
So, we created this area for really a host of training activities.
It's one of the areas in OneLab VR where you can take two centrifuge safety courses, one for a
microfuge and one for a large bucket style centrifuge.
Both of them really are focused on properly loading and balancing a centrifuge.
But in development, we have specimen handling scenarios for this area that make use of these,
the pneumatic tube delivery system where sort of samples show up, you have to accession
them, reject the correct or incorrect samples and send them on.
We have tons of other equipment in this area.
And yeah, let's move through this door to the Core Lab.
So, as you can see, the Core Lab is really just chock-full of laboratory equipment and supplies.
This lab was designed really for those core lab activities.
And sure, we have specific specialty focus labs elsewhere in OneLab VR, but in the Core Lab, we
anticipate a lot of everyday activities and basic training to occur.
We have interactive freezers and refrigerators and incubators throughout OneLab VR, and
we've really tried to make them as realistic as possible, from interior doors to little things over
here, like... let me go over here to this fridge.
So, yeah, little things like this, like just the spinning fan that you find inside this refrigerator.
Now on the other side of the technical front, we've placed several large, automated laboratory
instruments in the Core Labs, with the plans of adding training for these hematology and
chemical analyzers. We realized that advancements in laboratory automation are really
essential training topics as well.
So, that's why we included them in here.
We have a packing and shipping scenario that takes place here, but let's return to the North
Corridor.
While designing the layout for this this building, we wanted to leave room for expansion.
So, we added these offices, and we added some meeting space in areas that we figured we're
eventually going to convert into laboratories.
So yeah, let's go in here.
This is our smallest laboratory for dark-field microscopy with this really detailed fluorescing
microscope.
And we'd really like to start on some training for this sometime soon.
But yeah, this is just a little lab with a waste container, spill cleanups, that sort of thing.
Let's head on out.
OK... let's go check out this microbiology lab.
So, it's one of the larger laboratory environments in OneLab VR, and we've loaded it with nearly
every piece of equipment and supply that you may need for this type of training.
We have biosafety cabinets, a variety of PCR, MALDI-TOF, and mass spec machines.
Let's see... what else do we have?
Well, in this corner we have the O2 and CO2 compressed gas canisters
(Oh, they're so pretty) being used for our O2 and CO2 incubators.
And over here, a machine for platelet testing, another biosafety cabinet.
So yeah, lots of stuff.
Let's head back to the North Corridor.
Remember when I was talking about a card key access to certain secure areas?
Well, this is one of them.
You need a card key to enter the BSL-3.
So, let me say this, we're in VR so we didn't have to pay extra for more square footage.
So, our anteroom and BSL-3, they're much larger than one you'd probably find in real life.
And really, we did this because space wasn't a restriction in VR and we wanted people to not
feel claustrophobic in a room with, you know, potentially 10 or 20 other learners with them.
Entering the BSL-3, we see all the things you would probably see in a lab like this.
We have a cart loaded with supplies to be used inside this beautifully modeled BSC and over
here we have a little room containing safety signage of course and a pass-through autoclave
that connects to the autoclave room next door.
Going back into the BSL-3 main area, you know, you can see we have an assortment of
laboratory equipment and interestingly enough we're in the development of a series of BSC
scenarios at the moment.
So, let's go back into the anteroom and back into the north hallway.
Oops.
So, down the hall from the BSL-3 and pretty much smack dab in the middle of OneLab VR's
North and South corridors is the Anatomical Pathology lab.
Let's head in.
This lab now is loaded with some of my favorite pieces of laboratory equipment.
In a separated area, we have this large grossing station where tissue specimens can be
examined.
We also have some standard lab equipment scattered throughout, but we also have a variety of
specialty equipment like this tissue slicer and plating unit.
We have slide staining stations, large microtomes, processors, fixing and embedding
workstations, and a lot of other stuff.
I really like this, this embedding station.
I think it just looks neat, looks cool, and this microtome.
Yeah, can't wait to start building stuff with this.
All right, let's head back to the hallway.
So, across the hall we have a large autoclave room.
We have shelves full of supplies and PPE.
Over here is where you can start the autoclave training scenario.
You get to wear these cool heat resistant gloves in that one.
Remember what I said about signage?
Well, we love that stuff.
We have these two really large autoclave units against the wall here. Check out this detail.
When it's running,
these gauges, they're all active.
It's pretty cool.
That's the other side of the pass-through autoclave.
Let's continue on.
We know that clinical and public health laboratories have vastly different sized waste areas
depending on the amount of waste they generate, the types of waste and so on.
And for this we created this Chemical Waste Room.
We have the large-scale cabinets for storing flammables and chemical items, carts for acids and
bases.
Really the thought for this room would be to use it during training scenarios focused on waste
management and safe storage of dangerous materials.
All right.
All facilities really never seem to have enough storage for supplies.
So, we just created this little area.
I guess if you need printer, paper, trash can labs, this is where you'd come to get it.
Really, it's essentially a space that we could use if we need to expand any of the labs, but we
like it.
All right.
Continuing to the South Corridor, at this end of the facility, we created a basic employee break
room because I guess sometimes you need a cup of coffee, place to eat your lunch, right.
Got some more office and meeting spaces.
Let's see.
We'll check out the Molecular Sequencing Lab now.
As I'm sure you know, a key to avoiding contamination is to have your Reagent Prep and your
Specimen Prep Area separated from the general work area.
So, we created these separate rooms within the sequencing lab.
For this reason, we hope to be able to start creating training scenarios that focus on
contamination free work practices, proper workflow, reagent creation and preparation, as well
as the other tasks required when working with uncontaminated specimens.
Again, we've loaded up these areas with equipment for your use.
Lots of good stuff. Over here
we have high-throughput automated assay machines.
We have sequencers and yeah, over here of course real time PCR machines.
We hope to start using this lab really to do high complex sequencing training.
Excited about that as well.
All right, let's head back out.
Oops.
OK, Special Chemistry.
So, the Special Chemistry Lab here contains a lot of the laboratory items that you're used to
seeing.
At this point, there shouldn't be any surprise there, but we do have an automated liquid
handling and pipetting workstation.
And to those familiar with working in a chemistry lab, we also have an automated mass
spectrometry machine.
And let's see over here, our large chemical fume hood is ready for doing training, really any
type of training that involves vapors and chemicals.
And of course, you need the periodic table to make this place complete.
So, we had to add that.
And at the end of the hall here we have our specimen collection resources.
And what this area is, is we understand that sometimes you just need some open areas in a lab
to work and that's why we created this, the specimen collections and resources area.
And through this door we're back in the lobby.
We wanted to really build OneLab to be able to expand to facilitate multiple scenarios.
So, we created this waiting room area where potential patients can come to check in or drop
off specimens or having basic laboratory procedures.
Hold on, let me scan my badge.
Learners can use these collection rooms for practicing blood draws.
Speaking with a specialist and, you know, soft skills like that.
OK, I will head back into the waiting room and back into the lobby.
All right, so now you have sort of a sense of the scale and the contents of the OneLab VR
environment.
Let's jump into multiplayer.
But before I do that, I want to show you the wrist menu.
This is really what we use as a menu to access a bunch of settings in VR.
You could adjust certain accessibility settings as well as you can tweak your user preferences,
like your name and your avatar color.
You could jump right into a training scenario without having to find it.
You could adjust your sound settings.
And that in does include turning on your voice chat for multiplayer.
And last, you could join a multiplayer session, which is what we're going to do now.
Let's hope this works.
Hold on.
[Teresa the SME] All right. So, today, what we're going to do is we're going to learn how to set
up items on our bench that we'll be working with so that we are working with items going from
clean to dirty to most contaminated.
So, think of this like a conveyor belt where the items on one side are most clean.
So, items like your paper towels and your disinfectant can be over here on this side off of the
workbench absorbent pad.
And so, the absorbent pad is the area where you're going to work with your specimens.
That's such that if you drop anything or spill anything, it'll absorb it and keep it all contained.
Items as you go down your conveyor belt over on the far, on your far-right side would be most
contaminated, so that would be things like your sharps container and your waist container.
The whole goal here is to avoid holding something in your hand that's contaminated and
crossing over something on the bench that's clean.
You don't want to risk dropping anything or spilling anything on there and contaminating it.
So, see if you can take these items keeping that idea in mind of clean to dirty principle and
working with this sort of conveyor belt workflow.
[Santiago] I have a question, would I normally put the dirty things first or the clean things first?
[Teresa] So right now, while you're working with all of these things, these things should have all
been disinfected, so your waste container should all be clean.
Your specimens of course would be contaminated, so you could put those last if you so want to.
OK
So, I have a question. So is it okay to put these clean items not on the work surface?
Right, because you don't want to contaminate your paper towels because that's what you're
going to use to clean down your bench after you're finished.
OK. Thank you.
And then I guess it's sort of on the, on the same topic is it's okay to, for us having this, this
vortex mixer kind of half on, half off?
Right, because that's heavy enough that that's going to stay in place.
It's not going to move anywhere.
It's just so long that you know you've got it, you've got it set far enough over that, you know, if
it's going to generate, you know, any aerosols, hopefully not, you're not going to contaminate
the items, that you have on this side.
OK, great.
All right, so let me come around and take a look at what you have.
All right.
That actually looks pretty good.
Yeah, I think you did that.
I think you did that quite well because the idea is here, is your pipette tips are sterile.
So, if you were to pick up this pipette, put a pipette in it, pick up your sample, go over.
Now when you're going to drop your pipette tip in here, you're going to put it into your waste.
You're not going to be crossing over any of this, any of these items over here.
Great.
I think the only thing I might do is, I might put your tape over here just so that it's off to the side
because your pipette tips are, you know, minimally contaminated.
I mean, they're they really shouldn't have anything on them, but you are using them to pick up
sample with the tips out of your tubes.
All right. I think that looks great.
Nice job.
Thank you.
All right.
Any questions?
Thank you very much!
Oh, you're welcome.
All right, so, that kind of I think gives everyone a real solid sense of what currently exists in
OneLab VR as well as the possibilities of what you could do using that, that multiplayer
functionality of it.
And I guess now I'll I guess open it up to questions.
Yeah, Thanks, Joe.
We have had a few questions that have come through in the questions and answers panel and
it looks like we've got some VR Team members who've been answering some of those as we go
along.
One question that I had for you Joe is about the competency rate.
So, one of the attendees asked, what is the competency rate of staff who've taken a VR training
versus those who are being trained in an actual lab real time?
[Joe] So, I don't have those numbers off the off the top of my head, but I do have, we have lots
of experience with experience like 20 plus years laboratory professionals that work in for
example biosafety cabinets every day.
And we had them go through our virtual reality biosafety cabinet course in VR and receive
feedback of "Oh my gosh, this was so great."
"It reminds me of things that I normally don't do, that I'm supposed to do every time before I
start up a BSC."
And so we've received really good information from experienced people that it is valuable, it
reinforces skills.
And you know, for new people, it really sort of gives them a sense of starting, starting to
develop those, those sort of reflexive motions of working inside a laboratory so that when they
actually step foot in a lab, they're sort of one step ahead of everyone else.
[Blanche] Right. And that reminds me of some information that you all have on the OneLab VR
page talking about this not being a substitute for live training.
Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Yeah. So, we've been doing in DLS, we've been doing training for clinical and public health
laboratory professionals for 10 years, 15 years more than that, almost 20.
And we have found that we have the e-learning side of things.
And then for a while we were managing and doing live hands-on training inside one of our
training labs and really started having you our target audience started asking us hey, we need
something in between e-learning and in between hands on training.
We need something that we could do online that actually builds skill sets and so that's sort of
the that's where the that was the impetus for our journey into VR.
And I think as the as VR technology advances, I think our ability to train better will advance as
well.
During COVID, there was a huge need for just basic PPE training, how to properly take off your
gloves for example.
And VR isn't quite there yet of being able to determine are you using you know, two fingers?
are you using your thumb? are you squeezing the glove tight enough?
I think it will be eventually but right now that sort of level of fidelity isn't quite there yet.
So, we're just sort of sticking with a procedural process-based training that will help people gain
these skill sets and just develop that reflexive action of if I'm using a pipette and aliquoting, I
know that I need to eject my pipette tip between every time I dip it because I've taken enough
VR training courses and been corrected that, that's become habit.
Great. Thanks Joe!
Uh, huh.
[Blanche] Another question that I saw come through is whether or not anybody has injured
themselves using VR.
What safety features are there to prevent slipping or falling while using VR equipment?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I can tell you in my household we had a beautiful flat screen TV on the wall.
That's been a casualty of some overzealous VR use.
But then again, you probably won't have a teenager swinging their arms around madly in your
house doing it.
But no. For a long time,
there's sort of been this view of motion sickness is a huge concern with VR, and that was very
true in sort of the early days of virtual reality.
We've learned and we being sort of the VR community, that there's ways programmatically we
could build VR training and experiences to really reduce and minimize the possibility of motion
sickness.
Within our courses,
we've added accessibility features that allow you, if you want to do the whole training seated,
for example, instead of standing, you're able to still reach and grasp anything and complete all
the training.
Because I come from a background where I really, I love Section 508 and accessibility.
Tackling those sort of accessibility topics in virtual reality is fascinating because essentially, it's a
very inaccessible technology because it's you're really focused on seeing things and using both
your hands and working to find solutions of how do we make it where you know if you can't
move your neck you could still you know look around and properly complete these courses and
it's exciting.
But in terms of injuries, I haven't we haven't heard of any.
I think when it comes to motion sickness is really, I think the big one and just our experience
has been if you're one of these people that gets motion sick watching movies where there's a
lot of camera movement and stuff like that then there's a possibility that you're going to get
motion sick in VR.
But we've also had people that do get motion sick and car sick and all of that take it.
We, we'd sort of demo these at a lot of our symposiums and conferences and they've taken it
and said, "oh my gosh, I went into this thinking I was going to get sick," and nope, it was this
was awesome.
This was amazing.
So, I hope that that answers the question.
Yeah.
Thanks, Joe.
Yeah.
[Blanche] Another question that came through is, where is this available? and is the software or
access and or access free?
Yeah absolutely.
So yeah, everything that we do is free.
I think your best bet is always starting with reach.cdc.gov and going the REACH website there's
a training tab.
You can find the VR training on there. You can find information about it.
Everything is free.
We have designed this for...
We've designed it using the Open XR format which is basically a language that means it should
be able to run on any headset that is Open XR compliant, which is basically all the headsets.
We tend to use the Meta Quest 2 just because it's really inexpensive and it's easy to set up and
interestingly enough we have a program in place where if you're at a clinical or public health
laboratory you can reach out and potentially receive headsets from CDC through a partnership
with APHL to help your lab become a VR ready.
It's called the VR Ready Laboratory Program.
And so, I think we could drop a link in the chat for that.
But yeah, everything's free, just the headset.
But the headsets recently actually just came down in price, where they're $200, 199 for a
headset and you're good to go.
[Blanche] I see somebody had asked a question about accessibility and this person wants to
know if VR represents wheelchair reality or standing reality?
So, if somebody is using a wheelchair and they're using VR, is it going to be from a standing
perspective or a seated perspective?
[Joe] Yeah, yeah, that's a that's a great question.
And that's something that we were very intentional and aware of really from the get-go. We
have it set, I think I said earlier where you could do the entire experience from a seated
position.
So therefore, you know in a wheelchair through VR you could sort of adjust the height of your
wheelchair so if you needed it to be you know your viewpoint to sort of be at a tabletop level,
you can do that.
So yeah, I think we've done a pretty darn good job making sure that it is accessible to
something like that and we're constantly evolving our accessibility tools in it.
One of the ones that we're going to be attacking next is people that have tremors, whether it
be Parkinson's or something like that in their hands where we're going to add almost like a
dampening feature where you could slow down the controller movement so they're still able to
more easily point and grip things even though their hands might be moving a lot.
Thanks Joe.
Another question is how long does training development take? and when can we expect new
trainings to be released?
That's a great one.
So, our plan right now and we've been knocking it out of the park is we want to release at least
one additional training scenario every quarter.
I think as our team gets faster and bigger, we hopefully will be able to do more than that.
But right now, it is one additional training scenario per quarter.
The training scenarios are averaging.
We sort of try to keep them between 5:00 and 10:00 minutes long, both because we know that
your time is valuable and a lot of people who work in laboratories, training is sort of the last
thing they have time for.
And also, because it's virtual reality, it's a new technology and we don't want to force anyone to
be stuck in a headset for an hour, because that's just too much for some people.
Thanks, Joe.
You had mentioned some longer trainings, or I think you did that you all had developed.
Do you want to talk a little bit about the PPE and BSC training that are available outside of this
virtual environment?
Yeah, absolutely.
So, our first virtual reality training course that we released was on biosafety cabinet training
that is available both for the Meta Quest headset and it's also available for a tethered HTC Vive
which is sort of the bigger, more heavy-duty headsets, one's available on the Quest App Lab,
one's available on Steam.
They all have links through the REACH course listing for that course.
Like I said, that was our first one and that averaged around an hour, an hour and a half long.
We knew it was long.
We intentionally put an intermission in the middle of it where we told people to take off their
headset and go experience life.
It's a great a great training course for setting up and disinfecting and working and tearing down
a BSC.
Our second one was on personal protective equipment and because you know it's really
difficult like I said before to sort of test for are you using your hands properly to don and doff.
We went with sort of a PPE museum type of environment where you were able to walk around
this large museum we created and sort of see the different types of risks and see how PPE
would prevent that risk from becoming a laboratory acquired infection.
And so, we sort of set up a bunch of little like dioramas and things where people could see that.
And then we gave you the ability to put things on to see what would happen if you got infected
or got like a splash or a spill on you; test it to make sure you could take off your PPE in the
correct order.
And you knew all the processes for, for getting yourself cleaned up before leaving the
laboratory.
Oh, I think you're muted.
Thanks, Joe.
One question that came through is about using the controllers.
Since people are using controllers, then how are things like real pipetting skills learned?
Yeah, that's a great one.
So, the plan is eventually the way the technology is going, you won't need the controllers,
everything will just be hand tracking.
In fact, they sort of already do that with a lot of the headsets.
But currently the way we handle pipetting is when we introduce a new piece of equipment, a
new mechanic that what we call it, we'll have the person do a tutorial where we'll teach them,
hey, the trigger on this controller is the dispense button.
Hitting A on this controller is, you know you do that, to adjust how much you're going to
withdraw.
So, we have to try to teach the people because yes, ultimately right now you're holding a,
you know, a TV remote control essentially in your hand and it's not going to to have the same
feel as a pipettor.
But we do try to train people how to use the buttons.
What we're saying works where, you know, down the road we could look at integrating it into a
real pipette.
But I think right now it's we teach the people how to use new instruments in VR.
Yeah. And I think another thing that I've heard you say before is this is an intermediary.
So, we've got book or classroom learning, e-learning, virtual reality is an opportunity to practice
things in a safe environment where there is no risk or low risk.
And then you know from there people would be going into real laboratory, real laboratories
and doing hands on practice and learning.
But this is an intermediate step, right?
[Joe] Yeah. And again, hopefully it's this intermediate step helps them develop those reflexive
movements and actions and thoughts.
So when they go into a lab for the first time, they already know.
Clean to dirty, they already know.
Eject your pipette tip.
Assess your risk to see, okay, do I just need gloves or should I probably put on a mask and a face
shield for this, that sort of thing.
Let's see.
I'm scrolling through some questions... and...And so just I think to let people know we have a
list right now we're probably at like 30 or 40 different scenarios.
So we have, we have worked for a while, but really I think we're going to start focusing on those
live multiplayer scenarios where we could create almost like a train, the trainer toolkit that will
teach trainers how to create and manage their training within a live multiplayer environment,
because I think like VR it's hard to sort of envision until you've actually seen it and experienced
it.
But I think once you see and experience that sort of multiplayer training like you saw earlier
with the clean to dirty principle, I think it'll become clear where that could help you.
Great.
Another question came through that asked, how many modules are available in OneLab VR at
this time?
So, at this time, we have a tutorial module that teaches you how to move around and pick
things up, put things down in VR.
We have a Packing and Shipping Dangerous Goods tutorial.
And we have two different centrifuge tutorials, one on a microfuge and one on a large
bucketfuge.
We're almost ready to release an autoclave scenario.
And like I said, we have a bunch in process.
Great.
Well, I don't see any more questions.
Joe, do you have anything else that you'd like to share with the group before we take a break?
Yeah, I don't, I don't think so.
I would say, if you think you're in a laboratory that would benefit from a VR headset, reach out
through the VR Ready Laboratories program.
I would say, talk to your kids, your students, your grandkids about VR and I think you'll see that
for the right topic.
I mean, we don't want to use VR for how to fill out a timesheet, but for the right topic it could
be amazing.
I really do believe that it is the future of training.
Great and we'll add the link to the VR Ready Laboratory Program back to the chat.
I think we had already added it earlier, but we'll add it again.
And once again, if you all have additional questions that you think of later, please submit them
at OneLab@cdc.gov We really appreciate you, Joe, showing us the OneLab VR environment and
doing this really exciting multiplayer exhibition for us.
So, we really appreciate it.
Absolutely.
Thank you!
Great.
So, what we're going to do is take a break and we will come back at 2:30 and we look forward
to seeing you all then.
Duration
Event Speakers
Joe Rothschild
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)