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The Sim Cafe~
Discussions on innovative ideas for simulation and reimagining the use of simulation in clinical education. We discuss current trends in simulation with amazing guests from across the globe. Sit back, grab your favorite beverage and tune in to The Sim Cafe~
The Sim Cafe~
The Lou Oberndorf Story: Pioneering Medical Simulation
Lou Oberndorf's vision transformed healthcare education forever. As founder of Medical Education Technologies (METI), he brought simulation technology from aerospace into medical training when educators were still relying on centuries-old teaching methods. "Medicine has been practicing on us for a thousand years and we're done with it," Lou explains, capturing the revolutionary spirit that drove his pioneering work.
What makes Oberndorf's story fascinating isn't just the technology he championed, but his crucial insight that curriculum development—not just hardware—would determine simulation's success. When nursing educators struggled to integrate these new tools, METI took on the ambitious project of reconstructing entire nursing curricula around simulation opportunities. This comprehensive approach dramatically accelerated adoption across healthcare education, elevating nursing to become a full partner alongside medical schools in simulation-based training.
The journey wasn't without surprises. Oberndorf candidly shares his shock at healthcare's initial resistance to innovation and the delicate balance required between advancing technology and allowing time for meaningful adoption. His current work with Operative Experience continues his lifelong quest for anatomical fidelity—creating simulators that truly look, feel, and respond like human patients for trauma and combat medicine training.
Looking toward the future, Oberndorf believes artificial intelligence will transform every aspect of healthcare simulation while maintaining that hands-on experience remains irreplaceable. His legacy extends beyond the technology itself to the creation of an entire industry and career path for simulation educators who once risked being labeled "career killers" for their forward-thinking approach.
Ready to explore how simulation can transform your healthcare education program? Connect with Innovative Sim Solutions today to discover the powerful world of simulation-based learning that Lou Oberndorf helped pioneer decades ago—technology that continues to save lives by preparing healthcare providers for their most challenging moments.
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The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of anyone at Innovative Sim Solutions or our sponsors. Thanks to Innovative Sim Solutions for sponsoring this week's episode. Are you a healthcare professional or educator looking to level up your training methods? Then you need to check out the Basics of Healthcare Simulation, a dynamic foundational course designed to introduce you to the powerful world of simulation-based learning, from mannequins to virtual reality. This class breaks down the tools, techniques and strategies that bring clinical education to life safely, effectively and realistically. Whether you're brand new to simulation or just want a refresher course, this will give you the confidence and skills to create engaging, high-impact learning experiences.
Disclaimer/ Innovative Sim Solutions Ad. /Intro:Ready to revolutionize how to teach and train, reach out to Deb Tauber at Innovative Sim Solutions to set up your training today. Welcome to The Sim Cafe, a podcast produced by the team at Innovative Sim Solutions, edited by Shelly Houser. Join our host, Deb Tauber, and co-host, Jerrod Jeffries as they sit down with subject matter experts from across the globe to reimagine clinical education and the use of simulation. Clinical education and the use of simulation. So pour yourself a cup of relaxation, sit back, tune in and learn something new from The Sim Cafe.
Deb Tauber:Welcome to The Sim Cafe and today we're honored to welcome. Lou Obendorf. A pioneer leader in medical simulation and healthcare innovation is the founder and former chairman of Medical Education Technologies METI. Lou transformed a small startup into a global leader in simulation-based medical education. His work has impacted institutions worldwide. Beyond his professional achievements, lou is deeply committed to education. He and his wife, rosemary, established the Rosemary and Lou Oberndorf 63 Endowment at Seattle Preparatory School to support tuition assistance for future generations of students. Please welcome me in joining Lou Oberndorf to the Simcafe podcast as we delve into his journey and insights into his evolving work. So thank you and welcome Welcome, Jerrod.
Jerrod Jeffries:Thank you and Lou thanks so much for being on with us. Thank you very much. It's my privilege.
Deb Tauber:Do you want to add anything to your introduction?
Lou Obendorf.:w Well, you started me in 1963, but that involves a passion of our family and that is for education and all of our, the majority of our, if you will, giving back or paying it forward, has been in the area of education, educational grants. We're especially passionate about first gen graduates, first 10 students at every level, but anyway, that's what we've been privileged and blessed and this is our, that's our area of giving back.
Disclaimer/ Innovative Sim Solutions Ad. /Intro:Both my wife and.
Lou Obendorf.:I are first gen, so it's really really close to our hearts.
Jerrod Jeffries:So I think we have a lot to get through. So we might, you know we want to be respective of your time, but also I think our listeners are pretty to get through. So we might, you know we want to be respective of your time, but also I think our listeners are pretty excited to, as we are. So we'll try to chunk this up into you know a couple parts. So if you see us kind of pushing things along in popcorn and some questions, you'll see that. You know we just have some insights from our listeners that we want to get to Sure. But first maybe you want to tell us about maybe some those earlier or newer to simulation who's Medi? What you know, what's, what's it become now? What can they relate to? And start from the early vision and the origins of it.
Lou Obendorf.:Well, I think the best way to it really goes back to 1996, when at the time I was working for a major aerospace defense company working out of New York City and we were looking for commercial ideas to try to take our military-developed technology into other areas of commercial opportunities. And I came across an invention by a team of anesthesiologists and biomed engineers at the University of Florida that had basically developed an anesthesia patient simulator funded by the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation back in the early late 80s, early 90s, and became very excited about it. And why I was excited about it one was it was part of our mission, my mission to take the company into other areas of corporation, but it reflected simulation and simulation was and the technology of simulation we were very comfortable with because we've been using the military and aerospace has been using simulation, had been using simulation for 100 years, 75 or most years up to that point in time. So we saw the power of simulation and we really believed that healthcare could benefit from that. So we were excited about it. I was excited about it, I went ahead and licensed the project for the company. About two years later they were getting ready to do something different and they were going in a different direction and I purchased the product line which was the patient simulator product line from the University of Florida license and then started METI M-E-T-I from the University of Florida, IS and then started METI M-E-T-I. And really what we were about to begin with and we talked about it earlier was to not only to commercialize this, what we thought was an exciting product and opportunity. But to our surprise we found that healthcare had not and was not using the power of simulation and had not and was not using the power of simulation and had not.
Lou Obendorf.:I tell the story that I used to tell when I would meet with investment bankers or other civilian audiences, non-healthcare audiences that if you had entered, let's say, Harvard Medical School in 1990, for instance, call it 85 to make sure you would have been taught the same way that they'd been teaching it for 100 plus years, if you were to enter, then I would talk about it in the 90s and the 2000s, I could even say it today. But if you were to enter medical school, nursing school, paramedic, community colleges, anywhere in the world today where health care education is delivered, you will find this technology that's. That's the journey that we've been on, but we believed in that in 1996. And so that's why we started Medi. We began to explore that, as we talked earlier, and we were selling mostly to medical schools, early adopter, mostly anesthesiologists. But we needed to build a bigger marketplace and, as we spoke earlier, we decided that we had to move it into nursing education and overnight our addressable market, in a business sense, exploded on us, and that's where we continue to focus on medical schools and higher end high fidelity simulations. But also we began to move it into nursing education, began to move it into nursing education. If you look today at any of the nursing organizations or IMSH or even SESM coming up in Europe increasingly, but mostly IMSH, the nursing component, nursing education component, is quite dominant in terms of population, in terms of expenditures, in terms of capital expenditures, in terms of research. I'm particularly proud of the fact that our small role in this but nursing has really become a full-fledged partner in healthcare education Now using technology, on a par with their medical school academic counterparts, if you will.
Lou Obendorf.:So it's a wandering answer, but the fact is that's what we started to do. As we began to apply technology, which we were very comfortable with from our years in aerospace, we began to explore new and better ways to present a platform that could really represent the human body. Everybody talks about trauma, but in fact, you've seen, over the growth of the last 25 or 30 years, we've gone beyond just trauma education, although that's still extremely important High risk, high reward kind of events. We've gone way beyond that and so, as the technology has followed that way, so that was our beginning. One of the key things that we believed in passionately at Medi was that we could build the technology and the old idea that build the technology, and they will come. We quickly discovered that what was a critical piece of this success was the curriculum, because in the beginning, if you think about it, having never used the technology, academics really didn't have a familiarity or a comfort with how to develop the curriculum to utilize the technology.
Lou Obendorf.:So our early years, at METI really explored the idea of developing curriculum around the use of these simulators, if you will. Developing curriculum around the use of these simulators, if you will. I remember one of the major projects that we launched at METI in nursing education was that I challenged my learning department to take the nursing curriculum the two-year or four-year nursing curriculum, take it apart, look at every component, every module that could benefit from the use of simulation, identify that, build that roadmap, that template, and then build curriculum around each of those modules on how to use it. And we literally reconstructed then the nursing curriculum and we partnered with North Texas University, I believe. If I recall, we vetted it through a variety of nursing colleges and that was really one of our major advancements and that I believe could partner the technology and the use of it and how to use it with your curriculum. It became a far better and a far quicker adaptation.
Jerrod Jeffries:And you guys did that yourself. You didn't work with a book publisher or someone quickly. We did it ourselves. We did it ourselves.
Lou Obendorf.:We did it ourselves, but we did it absolutely in full partnership with an accredited nursing school, north Texas. But then, when that was done, and then we then brought in a team of both two-year and four-year RN programs to vet it, so we validated it through that mechanism and then launched it. I believe it's still in use by what has become MedE, became CAE, became Elevate, if you will, to this day. And then on top of that we brought in the whole learning management system, which was a great. So we were all about the whole education ecosystem. That's right and that's what enabled, I believe, looking back on it, I believe that's what accelerated the adoption of this technology.
Jerrod Jeffries:Yeah, because that was one of my pieces was you know a lot of people try this, the moonshot, or try a large, large piece, and you know there's a lot of failures. And one of my thoughts was why did Medi succeed? And I think, taking it from a grass roots, full ecosystem, start with curriculum, meet people, people where they are, and then don't just throw technology at them, but have them understand why technology is going to help accelerate their, their curve, and so, precisely, and and I think we were.
Lou Obendorf.:we were clearly pioneers in that we pioneered that approach. I believe that prior to that, you basically built task trainers and you taught them how to use the task trainer yeah, that was your training and then you left it with them and they figured out how to use it and how to apply it to their students, etc. This was far more intrinsic. As you said, the educational ecosystem. This is what we tackle. That and to this day, even my belief and every effort that I've, that I'm involved with, even to to this day, is all about curriculum and education. That's the glue or the fuel or whatever term you want to use, but that's the thing that really accelerates the use and adoption of the technology.
Jerrod Jeffries:Wonderful, that's a brief history, but those are some of the I love it. Yeah, and I think since then, right since Medi was acquired by CAE that was mid-2000s 2011,.
Lou Obendorf.:It was acquired by CAE Aerospace.
Jerrod Jeffries:Yes, yeah, so take us through more of the present situation now with operative experience or whatever else.
Lou Obendorf.:Well, thank you. Thank you for letting me talk about OEI operative experience.
Lou Obendorf.:Let me talk about OEI experience, as in any business exit and what have you in the world, you have a period of time where you have to sort of stand out. They have a non-compete. If you will, you have to stand out and not do anything. I stood down after 2011 for a number of years but stayed involved, of course, with SSH and Thessum, still continued to give back. That was really our ability then to have the capacity to give back to both of those organizations, and it was extremely important to me to do that. But along the way, I kept looking at new technology and seeing stuff.
Lou Obendorf.:I was introduced in the mid-teens I think it was late teens about a technology that was started by a retired trauma surgeon called Operative Experience, OEI, and what appealed to me was the anatomical fidelity, the touch and the feel. One of the things that, from the very first day of Medi, the complaint was we conquered the technology. But then the complaint always was well, it doesn't look and feel like a real human and unfortunately, to this day, most of what you see on an exhibit floor, if you will, still does not look and touch and feel and act like a real human, and so there's always that doubt in our minds. So we were always on that quest, if you will. Well, this Dr Bob Buckman has sort of figured it out. He had come up with a formula for better skin and more durable skin etc. He was extraordinarily passionate about. He was a trauma surgeon, so he was passionate about anatomical fidelity and what have you.
Lou Obendorf.:So they were raising money and I invested in the company and since then I've basically taken OEI operative experience primarily into the combat medicine, trauma world. So that's what I'm involved with, that's what we're involved with now. We happen to have an obstetrics, an OBGYN product line, birthing simulator, patented birthing simulator as an OBGYN line, but our major focus it really is in combat medicine and trauma. That's what we're doing today.
Deb Tauber:Thank you. Now, what about the future, the vision and transformation? What areas of health care simulation do you think are still underserved?
Lou Obendorf.:Well, I think reality is still a problem, and I didn't say artificial or AR, I think just this quest for reality and the patient of the product that you're using to represent as closely as possible the human patient, if you will. That's a bit of a conundrum in terms of talking about that, because all of these other technologies that we see out there artificial reality, augmented reality, avatars and all of that are always working towards getting more and more reality, so that, again, the fundamental definition of simulation is the suspension of disbelief. And so, if you look at the breadth of technologies and products and efforts out there now, they're all, one way or another, trying to close the gap on the suspension of disbelief, they're trying to make it as real as possible.
Lou Obendorf.:Having said that, that's a physical, that's a material initiative, it's a technology effort in terms of artificial intelligence augmented reality, virtual reality, avatars, et cetera, and an expansion of various task trainers, that, even when a task trainer, if you will, has to suspend disbelief, it has to reflect in my opinion, it has to reflect as nearly as possible the patient that you're treating and you're learning about, and that is a general philosophy that I continue to try to pursue, even with OEI to make it as real as possible. How do you do that? Well, there's a variety of technologies. What is the future? I remember talking to the executive board of SSH, which I do every year at IMSH, and being asked that same question. And somebody said well, what about virtual reality? And I said well, if you're talking about virtual reality? And I pointed to the exhibit floor and I said if you find it on the exhibit floor, and you find it everywhere on the exhibit floor, it's already yesterday's news.
Lou Obendorf.:From a challenging standpoint. Now it has to be perfected, it has to be brought to market, it has to be shown that it is effectively integrated with the learning experience. Granted, it still has a lot. I believe it still has a long ways to go, even though there's a lot of virtual reality out there and augmented reality. Now, is that my sense is, is that the real challenge? If you want to look at what's going to happen next week, that's the old Gretzky thing, you know skate to where the puck's going to be, or it's really artificial intelligence, in my opinion. And I don't understand artificial intelligence, so I've spent a lifetime in technology and generally I'm the dumbest guy in the room, so I you know I going to permeate, of course, everything we do, from the curriculum argument that I made just a few minutes ago to how we use artificial intelligence to drive the experiential learning of the use of the simulator. Is artificial intelligence going to be buried?
Lou Obendorf.:in the simulator, is it going to be an adjunct to it? It's going to permeate everything that we do. Yes, virtual reality, augmented reality will be the next level. I think of adoption, but I believe that the challenge for virtual reality and augmented reality is A to make it affordable, scalable. Remember, we're teaching a lot of students and so it has to be scalable. It has to be effective when it's scalable to a number of students and it has to be reproducible. It has to be produced. Now, the production piece of it, the technology piece, is advanced. You can see that, you can see that in our everyday life. But is it scalable, is it affordable? And I think that those are the challenges for virtual reality. And then augmented reality being the merging, if you will, of the physical and the artificial. That's an application and a technology challenge. How do you effectively merge these so that they are used in an integrated fashion, so that you literally can suspend disbelief, if that makes any sense? Those are the challenges, and we may be getting back to a challenge. As we said earlier, not only does the technology have to be advanced to that point, but the curriculum and the application of it, how it integrates with the physical.
Lou Obendorf.:I'm a great believer, and always have been, is that the end of the day, a health care professional ultimately still has to lay hands on a patient. I know everybody says you can be these gloves and it feels like and it looks like an artificial and augmented reality. All of that I got it. I've been hearing it forever. Eventually you've got to lay your hands on a patient. You've got to feel what that's like, especially now in the world that we are in OEI with combat medicine.
Lou Obendorf.:You could pretend to be working on a wounded soldier under fire. You can have the lights and the screen, all of that, and that's all come about. We build our environments right To put you under stress, but the ultimate payoff is how do you treat that patient? And we've always believed that. I've always believed that and maybe I'm the mannequin guy. So consequently, I get back to the physical. I got it. Maybe I circle around and justify the physical, but the fundamental element of a surgeon could practice on the virtual reality and the augmented and all of that, but at some point in time they've got to actually operate on a patient.
Jerrod Jeffries:So, hearing all that, I want to actually flip to the other side of if you had unlimited resources, zero constraints, whatever, okay, what one tool would you would you build?
Lou Obendorf.:wow, well, the fact that I don't have an easy answer for you should justify nobody giving me unlimited funds because I would probably squander it.
Lou Obendorf.:Uh, I don't have a good. I think I would love to have, I guess, a robot. I'm the mannequin guy, so I guess a mannequin that walks and talks and dances, jumps and bleeds and does all of that. I think, ultimately, that I think I would like to have a learning environment. I would build a learning environment that eventually surrounds that patient and that learning experience. But people are doing that. And if I built that virtual cave, if you will, could the healthcare community and education community afford it?
Jerrod Jeffries:Yeah.
Lou Obendorf.:Think about virtual caves and that type of thing. It's getting easier and easier. But in fact, if you were to build out a full environment and do you need a full environment you probably need a lot of task trainers leading up to the final act, if you will, the final test. But if you were to build that environment people are doing it. I mean, there are centers around the world that are building that out. I mean up in Nebraska and a few other places now that I know of and I'm not up to speed exactly what's going on. They're building out these environments, but the more technology they put into that, the more unaffordable it becomes. So you could build this ultimate system and I don't have a good answer for you. But if I did, I wonder whether the community could afford it.
Jerrod Jeffries:Sure, and back to what your earlier comment right, it's scalability. Yes, the US is one very large market, but you're also wanting to make sure that you're including those globally, and I think how cost structures and resource allocations happen outside the US, even within, of course, but you got to always think about scalability and how that's going to work and affordability.
Lou Obendorf.:And I think that's probably the you know. Ultimately, you'd love to build a, you'd love to be able to produce a 10 or $15,000 or 20, 15,000 Euro simulator that does everything that the HBS did 25, 30 years ago.
Jerrod Jeffries:We're not there yet. We're not there yet, and AI might not even be able to do that.
Lou Obendorf.:So Well, AI will be a pieces of that, but with AI to me at least, again the dummy in the room the ai is not a, is not an integrated final solution unto itself. Right, it's pieces, it's an adjunct, it's use of it, it's not an end object, it's not a product, in my opinion.
Deb Tauber:No I agree, it's just a. It's a tool yeah, as is.
Lou Obendorf.:Virtual reality is a tool and it's an adjunct, if you will.
Deb Tauber:Now I'm going to ask you a little bit of a different question. But through all this, what has been some of the things that have really surprised you in your career? Because you've really, you are a pioneer by all rights.
Lou Obendorf.:Well, as I've said a number of occasions, being a pioneer, and I was honored, you know, to receive that award from ssh, being the first businessman, non-educator, non-health care professional to receive it toward lairdal, of course was the second. Being a pioneer only means that you're old, but the pioneers also get killed. Well, okay, look at him.
Jerrod Jeffries:We're going more and more and more of it here.
Lou Obendorf.:Being a pioneer only means that you're old and you've been around a long time, and what that also means is that yeah, you see a lot.
Lou Obendorf.:And increasingly, as I tell my staff now and I tell people understand something I'm full of anecdotes, because that's all a pioneer has to rely on is anecdotes of what he's seen or he or she has seen over the life. What surprised me? I was surprised by how let's go back 30 years. The first big surprise was that, coming out of aerospace and being comfortable with the use of simulation and the power of simulation, I was surprised by how backward looking healthcare was, healthcare education, and it took me a while to understand what I think was the reason. I think I've come to understand for the first 10 or 15 years of that journey was that healthcare medicine had us to practice on, had our families to practice on, they had a lot of students, a lot of the subject matter to practice on and therefore it seemed to me that the healthcare education, the medical education, to some extent less or so of the nursing education was done by practicing on us for hours and hours and hours.
Lou Obendorf.:The original purpose of the anesthesia team at Florida and at Stanford, and David Gaba and Mike Good are the two gurus, if you will. One, of course, David Gaba at Stanford. I think people forget that. Mike Good was the leader of the team at the University of Florida, went on to be dean of the medical school there and the CEO of Utah Health. He's since retired.
Lou Obendorf.:The reason they did it is because, as residents living under that old system, they really didn't see enough to prepare them to be actual attending, to actually handle an emergency. Because again in those days, if you were a resident or even an intern, something critical happens. You get hip checked out of the way and the professor jumps in and saves the day. That's why they started building this trainer to begin with. So again back to what I used to tell civilian audiences, bankers and what have you is that they've been practicing on they mean healthcare, the docs. Medicine has been practicing on us for a thousand years and we're not going to have any more of it. We're done with it. Our society is done with it. And that surprised me in the first 10 years, the lack of vision on the part of the healthcare education, medical education primarily medical education community. That was a big surprise that we had to overcome.
Lou Obendorf.:The next surprise was the fact that even though we as technology and educators kept innovating rapidly, aggressively at Medi outrunning, if you will, the competition, your former employer, always trying to stay ahead of them was that there was a limit to how innovative we could be. What do I mean by that? We could come up with new. We came up with the first pediatric high fidelity simulator. We came up with the first female high fidelity simulator.
Lou Obendorf.:But we were doing that on such a rapid pace that I came to understand finally that we were moving too fast. We were moving too fast for our marketplace to absorb. The technology is fine, we know how to move technology. We still do the team that I have at OEI. We still have that same Medi philosophy. We had to be more careful about how fast we introduce new products. That was a revelation to me that I had to learn through time and we were successful and we survived it. But the speed to market and the speed to innovation has to be tempered to some extent with how fast the community can adopt it. Go ahead.
Jerrod Jeffries:And do you think that's because it's healthcare, do you think it's because it's education, or do you think it's a mix, or do you think it's other factors?
Lou Obendorf.:I think it's a mix. I think in the beginning it was the curriculum piece of it. How do I use this? Because we were pouring technology into this community, which is basically, if you think about it, from 1996, we developed, you say, 3g, but we had the Mediman, we had constantly bringing out new products, the PDSM, et cetera. We were in 10 years. We brought out most of those products. And yet the community was still learning and adapting. It's all dumbfounded.
Jerrod Jeffries:Wait, what is this? That's right.
Lou Obendorf.:And that was the first revelation. It said we've got to bring the curriculum with it Because we realized that we were pouring this technology to them. They would buy it because they were adopters. And what have you? It's a combination of the education as well as the technology. Technology I can move technology. Look at AI and all this. I can move technology at a rapid pace. It moves faster than the educational community can absorb it and utilize it effectively.
Lou Obendorf.:Today, the community, I think what I'm pleasantly surprised and quite rewarding, I think, is this community has become really sophisticated in its acceptance, understanding to a large extent the power of this technology, of all kinds of simulation I call it experiential learning and so that they are driving where the industry should be going. And what do I mean by that? In the beginning, at Medi in 1996, go to a group of physicians or nursing educators and say what do you need? Because they didn't understand technology. So we had to basically drive that to the marketplace. We had to get the technology to them and help them understand it, absorb it through the educational efforts. I'm talking about curriculum, et cetera. Today, for instance, operative experience I've been in the company now maybe five six years.
Lou Obendorf.:This community knows more about what they need and understands the technology and have experience with the technology that they never had 25 years ago. So I have to now understand better. I have to listen to them because they have something to tell me. 30 years ago they didn't know. We spoke different languages. I'm wandering off your question about surprises, but I think it's the transition, the surprise. First, their inability, or what have you, to really understand what it was and adopt it. Then, as they adopted it, how they needed the curriculum, and now to this day. I think the surprise is that now we have to listen to them. We still have to talk to them about technology. They have to better understand and we have to better educate the community, the user community, on what technology can do, because, first and foremost, they're educators, they're not technology experts.
Lou Obendorf.:Industry that's the industry, that's the responsibility of industry and, to get beyond another element of mine, it's the Me Too. I think there's an awful lot of Me Too in the industry today. You see an awful lot of duplication of efforts, people hurting, if you will, towards an application or a technology, et cetera, without really fully understanding how it should be used. It is a technology for technology's sake is what I'm saying. So I was surprised Back to your question about surprise, what I was surprised by the fact that the community, I had to be careful that it wasn't just technology for technology's sake, and I think that still exists in our community. I really do. I think every new idea, et cetera, from an industry standpoint, let's go to product, raise some money and go to market, well, without ever really understanding and doing your homework in terms of how it's to be adapted and how it's to be used. So you know raising money and the old, you know the dirty business of business and that is cash flow and what have you? It's budgets, et cetera.
Lou Obendorf.:I think that surprised me. We had to learn a lot about that. That was surprising to me. We thought, coming out of the aerospace world, that medicine had as much money as they could that they needed because it felt and looked like the aerospace world. Well, that ain't true. And we found out that health care over even the last 30 years, even to this day, does not have unlimited funds. They don't have an unlimited source of funds, as you do in the defense business, if you will, or even the aerospace business, airlines and what have you. So they don't have the kind of capital and budgets. That was surprising to me. We had to adapt to that. We had to learn that as well.
Deb Tauber:Now that I think about it, Now you have a reflection of your legacy, now that I think about it. Now you have a reflection of your legacy. You've received many honors, including the SSH Pioneer Award and having the lecture named after you. How do you hope people will remember your contributions to this field?
Lou Obendorf.:Oh, my goodness, I got to self-reflect on that. Is that what you're asking me to do? Well, let me see. Let me put my humble hat on so I can really be effectively humble.
Lou Obendorf.:I think we changed. We METI to what role I played in that. I think we changed the face of healthcare education In 30 years. We helped create an industry. To be a part of that, to experience that for any quote entrepreneur or inventor or pioneer, if you will to have the incredible privilege of being at the beginning of an industry and see it blossom and see it actually grow into a viable industry, is something that I think will be, if you will, the legacy, one of the lines in the legacy.
Lou Obendorf.:But changing the face of healthcare education and patient safety, if you will, and making healthcare providers better, I think is one of the things that we'll be extremely proud of. The idea that I can go I experience it quite often now as I go now with operative experience but I come to IMSA et cetera, and I run across people who says, yeah, lou, we've known you for 25 years and I go well, help me with your name, turn the badge around so I can see your name, et cetera. They reflect on how they used to come to our global user meetings HBSN we started a global user meetings at Medi and that they've literally spent their career, because they're all older now with Medi. You can call it CAE, you can call it health, but they still refer to them as METI man. I think that's the legacy and I get that reflection as well. So I think that's part of the legacy. I guess that that's a legacy. It certainly is a nice feeling.
Deb Tauber:Yeah, no, you have a lot to be proud of. You really have done so many things and we thank you for all your contributions.
Lou Obendorf.:I have to learn how to say you're welcome too. So I always, we always were flourished, thank you, thank you, thank you, you're welcome.
Jerrod Jeffries:That's very nice of you. The world's certainly a different place than it was 30 years ago in health care, education and well, all three of all three of us have have careers from it, don't we?
Lou Obendorf.:education and well all three of us, all three of us have have careers from it, don't we? I mean literally, we've created lives and careers that uh and save lives, and of course it's saved lives, but on a personal base, on a. On a personal basis we've created careers yeah and that I'll take just quickly in the early days when you would go to and I also experienced this when I was in for a time was in surgical education as well.
Lou Obendorf.:30 years ago, for a professor or an aspiring professor, if you will, in medicine and to some extent in nursing education as well would say I want to become, I want to go into simulation, I want to become an educator.
Lou Obendorf.:They were really advised by their advisors to say why do you want to do that?
Lou Obendorf.:That's a career killer. I can remember professors of anesthesiologists that wanted that, were really early adopters that wanted to took their career in hand and put it on the line to go get this similar, this new technology, and they were being told by their peers and by their advisors that you're going to, you're going to kill your career, you don't want to go into education, you want to go into this, you want to go to this specialty or that specialty, etc. So and I've said this from the stage of IMSH where I'm privileged to be able to make comments is that that room is full of real pioneers and it's easier now, but it's still a rush, it's still a difficulty, it's still your take. Our folks are always putting their careers on the line, advocating for this learning tool, and are constantly trying to defend themselves, et cetera, et cetera, when they could have gone into more traditional specialties, if you will, both in medicine and nursing, but also in education. So yeah, that's cool, that's really gratifying.
Deb Tauber:Well, I want to thank you so much for your time and for everything that you've done and with that, we can do. You have any final words that you'd like to leave our listeners with?
Lou Obendorf.:I hope this has been educational for all of us and I hope I answered your questions effectively.
Jerrod Jeffries:I think we would have many more, but this has been wonderful and really appreciate the time Lou.
Lou Obendorf.:Well, you're going to see me at SESM, Deb. I assume you're going to see me at IMSH. Those are the next two big meetings.
Deb Tauber:That sounds wonderful. Thank you so much. What an honor.
Lou Obendorf.:Thank you, Thank you guys.
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