When former East Hartford Mayor Michael Walsh called with a problem, Matthew Wallace, president and CEO of VRSim, delivered a solution within eight months.
Wallace’s East Hartford-based company creates virtual reality simulations for the trades and Walsh had 24 high school students who wanted to become first responders, but were unable to nail the portion of the test involving anatomy and physiology.
That’s when Wallace and his team of programmers got to work creating an Emergency Medical Services simulator to help the kids get hands-on training and pass the test.
“We were struggling with finding candidates for police, fire and EMT services,” Walsh said. “To fulfill our pipeline we teamed up with the school system.” But those kids in the school system were not able to pass the anatomy requirements of the exam.
It’s not a surprise. Training programs for emergency medical services are notoriously underfunded. Connecticut spends 0.06 cents per capita on training for emergency medical services training. It’s 47th in the nation.
Walsh met Wallace in 2021 and called him to tell him in late 2022 about the problem. Wallace was only too happy to help and in the process expand his business, which focuses on VR technology for the trades.
“It’s built for the TikTok generation,” Wallace said. But the goal is to get individuals who go into the trades training with a lower-cost barrier to entry.
Whether it’s painting, welding, or even the certified nursing assistants, VR Sim has a product for each of them.
“I have a history degree and a law degree. I have no technical understanding of anything,” Wallace said. “I am self-taught on the technology, but I came with a wealth of business experience from representing small businesses.”
So how does a lawyer from Savannah, Georgia end up the head of a virtual technology company with 200 patents and product sales on every continent except for Antarctica?
“We have six of the 10 largest aerospace manufacturers,” Wallace said.
Wallace’s company scored a large contract with what was then Pratt & Whitney in 2001 for virtual reality to make product designs for the Joint Strike Fighter.
Then they built the first prototype for the virtual welding system and sold it to Lincoln Electric, the largest supplier of welding products in the world. That’s now turned into a $500 million industry.
From that they went onto develop the painting simulator, which is used by aerospace companies and automakers.
“We give them the technology to train painters,” Wallace said.
The program allows someone to perfect their painting technique and then it shows the company how much they saved in actual materials to use the virtual method.
“It’s more than just painting,” Wallace said. “It’s infrastructure repair. It’s bridge building. All of those are covered when you talk about industrial coverings. It’s not just paint. We do powder covering and sandblasting.”
But it’s more than just virtual paint.
Through their Japanese distributor they are using the technology to use a new part in virtual space to see how long it takes to paint it, how many painters it takes to paint it, and what the cost factor will be for an earth mover.
“That will allow them to make changes in the engineering and design of the part before they ever manufacture it,” Wallace said. “We like those concepts where we can fundamentally shift and provide value.”
They also like that they are helping workers in the workforce development and career space, who would be considered blue collar, but who make the community a safer place to live.
“It has the ability to make VR a modern apprenticeship,” Wallace said during an interview at their headquarters in East Hartford. “While imperfect, it is not an exact simulation, it is a training simulation.”
Sara Blackstock, who does marketing and communications for VRSim, demonstrated the program by stretching and cleaning a nursing home resident and performing CPR on a patient.
Holding the controls in her hands with the headset on, Blackstock got down on the ground and simulated chest compressions on a man the program named “Henry.” Everything she did was time. She checked for breathing and when she couldn’t see him take a breath on his own she went back to chest compressions, then grabbed the breathing bag and followed the directions.
“It doesn’t need a computer. It doesn’t need anything except that headset and instructions,” Wallace said referring to VRNA, the certified nursing assistant simulator. “You’re seeing the democratization of VR.”
He said they called it an apprenticeship because it’s “see one, do one. Instead of read about one and then try and then go do it.”
He said it works because even though you aren’t getting the resistance from pressing down on a chest, you are getting the muscle memory of what those motions should be like and actually doing it.
Wallace said it would be easier to have this at a nursing home and let someone who didn’t score well or injured a patient in the simulator while rolling them practice 10 times. He said someone could even take it home with them and practice in the comfort of their own house.
“It’s portable and doesn’t care in that sense,” Wallace said. “Which makes it cost effective for training in spaces that frankly are underserved and underserved in a lot of different ways.”
He said there are workforce shortages at nursing homes, firehouses, and over 400,000 open welding positions in the United States.
“It gives you a faster route towards competence,” Wallace said.
So what’s next for this company?
“We’re going to move up the ladder from CNA to LPN and EMS to EMT,” Wallace said. “The real up the ladder piece is going to be difficult patients, so patients with memory deficits or substantial arrest issues.”
And in the works at the moment is adding artificial intelligence that allows the students to ask a virtual assistant questions.
