CAE sees a healthy future in medical simulators

Lucina is giving birth and it is not going well. Her pulse is too fast, she’s having trouble breathing, the baby is stuck and then Lucina has a heart attack, meaning the health-care team needs to act fast so they can save both lives.

Fortunately for everyone involved, this is only a simulation and Lucina is not a real person, but an $80,000 high-tech birthing simulator designed by CAE Inc. as part of the company’s growing health-care division for training in medical schools and hospitals.

“You can’t be prepared for learning a new procedure just by reading an article, so you really need to practice and you want to practice on plastic and pixels before you do that on patients,” said Dr. Robert Amyot, president of CAE Healthcare.

On Thursday, CAE — a company better known for its military and commercial flight simulators — announced it was extending a funding agreement with the Quebec government to expand its development in health care.

The province began its repayable investment to support the creation of CAE Healthcare in 2009 and, though the agreement was initially set to expire this year, it will now be maintained until 2020.

However, because the Montrealbased company didn’t spend all the money it was allocated, the investment has been scaled back to $70 million, from a previous maximum of $99.8 million.

“That (investment) allowed us to become a leader in the market, but we didn’t spend all the money by being very responsible and cautious with our spending,” Amyot said.

CAE’s health care division has grown about 20 per cent in the past year, from $94.3 million in revenue in fiscal 2015, to $113.4 million in 2016.

“The adoption of simulation for certification and for training of nurses, paramedics and physicians is growing very fast,” Amyot said.

Along with birth simulators and other complete patient models, CAE also makes devices that simulate laparoscopic surgery, ultrasounds and brain surgery. So far, CAE says it has provided more than 10,500 simulators and audiovisual tools to medical schools and hospitals.

Quebec’s health minister, Dr. Gaétan Barrette, says that when he was doing his residency after medical school, the only way doctors could experience the wide range of complications during treatments was by being with a patient at the hospital when it happened.

“Nowadays, with equipment like this you don’t need to be there for 36 hours in a row to have the random chance to be exposed to a clinical situation that you have to be trained for,” he said, following Thursday’s announcement at the CAE headquarters.

Though the research and development is done in Quebec, the health care simulator assembly is done in Florida by a company called Meti, which CAE acquired in 2011.