Cutting simulation centre time by 50% — without cutting outcomes
The Women's Guild Simulation Center at Cedars-Sinai partnered with Virti to digitise medical training for 800+ residents — making immersive learning accessible on any device, anywhere.
Reduction in in-person simulation centre requirements
Residents and fellows onboarded through the platform
Remote completion vs. 10h in-person — same outcomes
The platform allows us to train and assess the ability of people to do certain things without physically having to bring them into a location.— Russell Metcalfe-Smith, Director, Women's Guild Simulation Center
800 residents. One simulation centre. Not enough hours in the day.
The Women's Guild Simulation Center at Cedars-Sinai trains over 800 residents annually, with 180 new residents going through onboarding each cycle. Traditional simulation-based training demanded physical presence in a dedicated centre — expensive, logistically complex, and impossible to scale at the pace the hospital needed.
When COVID-19 arrived, the challenge became urgent: clinical rotations were suspended, yet residents still needed to be trained and assessed before treating real patients.
Physical simulation was a bottleneck
Simulation centre capacity limited how many residents could train at once. High-volume onboarding cohorts faced scheduling delays that pushed training into already-pressured clinical time.
Consistency was hard to guarantee
In-person simulation sessions varied by facilitator, cohort size, and scenario conditions. Standardising the learning experience — and measuring it reliably — was a persistent challenge.
COVID created a training emergency
In March 2020, clinical rotations closed. Residents still needed to practise high-pressure scenarios — including COVID-19 patient management, PPE protocols, and resuscitation procedures — before going live on wards.
No way to assess readiness remotely
With residents unable to come to the centre, the L&D team needed a way to train, assess, and certify clinical competency from home — with the same rigour as in-person sessions.
Immersive, accessible, and measurable — from any device
Cedars-Sinai selected Virti — part of its 2019 Accelerator cohort — to digitise its simulation curriculum. The platform's 360° video capability, embedded knowledge checks, and performance analytics made it the right tool to replicate the simulation centre experience remotely.
Residents were transported into operating rooms, isolation wards, and clinical environments through fully interactive 360° video — without needing to be on-site.
The platform ran on iPhones, iPads, Android devices and VR headsets — removing the dependency on physical infrastructure and enabling learning anywhere.
Interactive questions appeared throughout each simulation, prompting clinical decision-making in real time and generating performance data the centre could act on.
The team could quickly update and publish new scenarios — including COVID-19-specific modules — without technical expertise or lengthy production cycles.
Digitising the simulation centre — scenario by scenario
Virti worked with the Cedars-Sinai team to convert existing in-person simulation courses into interactive 360° video experiences. The rollout prioritised high-volume onboarding scenarios first, then rapidly expanded into COVID-19 emergency response training.
Digitising core clinical simulations
Existing simulation centre courses — including patient assessment, CPR with protective equipment, and operating room procedures — were converted into immersive 360° video experiences with embedded decision points.
COVID-19 emergency response modules
As the pandemic escalated, the team rapidly built new modules covering PPE donning and doffing, COVID-19 patient management, ventilator protocols, and communicating with patients through protective equipment.
Remote assessment and performance tracking
Residents completed training at home via app, with performance data captured throughout — including response times, decision accuracy, and scenario completion rates — giving the simulation centre visibility without needing physical presence.
Try a clinical simulation like Cedars-Sinai's residents
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Half the time. The same outcomes. Featured on CNN and Forbes.
The results from Cedars-Sinai's Virti implementation were significant — and widely recognised. What previously required ten hours in a simulation centre was achieved in under five hours remotely. The project attracted national media coverage and set a new standard for scalable medical simulation.
Reduction in in-person simulation centre time required
Residents and fellows successfully onboarded through the platform
Remote training vs. 10h in-person — equivalent clinical outcomes
What changed for residents
- Train from home on any device — no centre visit required
- Immersive 360° scenarios that feel like the real environment
- Real-time feedback on clinical decisions throughout
- Reduced stress before first live patient contact
What changed for the simulation centre
- Scalable onboarding across 800+ residents per year
- Performance data without physical observation
- New COVID-19 modules authored and deployed in days
- More simulation centre capacity freed for complex cases
A growing library — built by the centre itself
The success of the programme has driven organic growth from within. An increasing number of clinicians and educators at Cedars-Sinai are now creating their own educational videos and simulation experiences on the platform — extending the library well beyond the original onboarding scope.
What's next
The simulation centre continues to expand its Virti-powered curriculum, with new scenarios added regularly by faculty and clinical staff using the platform's no-code authoring tools.
We have [doctors] jump quickly into a virtual environment like this to get them to where they need to be.