[Start人] Doctor CEO Providing CPR Training Through Virtual Reality

Interview with Jeon Sang-hoon, CEO of Tetrasignum
"To Increase Cardiac Arrest Survival Rates, CPR Training Must Be Strengthened"
Supplying MetaCPR to Hospitals, Large Corporations, and Public Institutions

"The number of people who unexpectedly suffer cardiac arrest outside of hospitals is about 30,000 annually in South Korea alone, and among them, 28,500 die. Survival rates can be improved through cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training learned in virtual reality, simulating real-life situations."

Three years ago, Jeon Sang-hoon, CEO of the healthcare startup ‘Tetrasignum’ founded through a professor-led venture (pictured, Professor of Thoracic Surgery at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital), believed early on that IT technology would contribute to patient safety and the advancement of the medical industry. Jeon, who served as the director of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital from 2016 to 2019, also led the establishment of the ‘Healthcare Innovation Park,’ a healthcare convergence research institute, during his tenure.

"Considering that about 3,000 people die annually from traffic accidents, it is clear that the number of deaths due to cardiac arrest is quite high. Prompt emergency response is the only way to save patients' lives. However, domestic CPR training has remained stuck in formal group sessions for years."

As CPR training became more neglected due to social distancing, he accelerated the development of ‘MetaCPR,’ a CPR training device utilizing new technologies such as virtual reality (VR). The MetaCPR implementation works as follows: when wearing a head-mounted display, a scenario of a passerby collapsing on the street unfolds before your eyes. You identify and call for help from nearby people and perform CPR directly on a physical mannequin. The mannequin is equipped with five sensors that evaluate whether the user has performed CPR correctly.

'TetraSignum's developed "MetaCPR"'

Jeon said, "We introduced MetaCPR at Asan Medical Center in Seoul and trained 500 people, receiving feedback with a satisfaction score of 4.9 out of 5." He added, "We plan to supply it to headquarters of large corporations such as KT in the future." Requests are coming mainly from institutions that mandate CPR training as a legal requirement and companies that prioritize employee safety and social contribution. Jeon cited MetaCPR’s strengths as its high realism, precise analysis, and real-time data transmission technology. Since the training is conducted by an AI instructor within virtual reality, it also offers cost-saving benefits in the long term.

Jeon emphasized, "Safety education can never be too thorough," adding, "Advanced countries increase opportunities for emergency response training linked to daily life to improve patient survival rates." In the United States, 39 states mandate CPR training for high school students, and European countries such as France and Switzerland require emergency response training to obtain a driver’s license.

Jeon plans to hold a CPR competition for high school students from three countries by the end of this year in collaboration with the University of Manchester in the UK and the University of Southern California in the US. He said, "To motivate students from each country, we will display scores in real time and enable communication," expressing his ambition to "make it a global event held in the metaverse."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.