Within the last five years, several events have taken place that will have a profound effect on the practice of medicine and patient safety. First, medical virtual reality simulators have been developed for training minimally invasive and other forms of surgical procedures. Second, evidence is beginning to show that surgeons who train with this technology are more skillful when they operate on genuine patients. Third, several regulatory agencies will soon begin to require this technology for training and certification. At present, most medical virtual reality simulators have been developed with little or no human factors involvement, but the need for human factors knowledge and expertise is paramount. In this paper, I describe what I perceive to be the top 10 areas where human factors professionals can contribute to the evolution and adoption of this new technology.
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