Arena Labs, Inc. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: J201-CSO1

Description

Multiple sources, including the Wall Street Journal, the American College of Surgeons, and major healthcare organizations have been reporting a troubling number of surgeons who are experiencing burnout. Medical professionals spend years training to become licensed. In some cases, a surgeon may invest 15 years of their life in acquiring the necessary skills and experience to operate independently. During nearly all of that time, the focus of training is on acquiring technical skills, and yet, while these skills are essential to medical care, the things that make an individual surgeon or surgical team extraordinary are non-technical. They are human factors rooted in an understanding of performance: communication, decision-making under pressure, awareness of stress, and the ability to understand one’s own physiology.   What if we treated surgical teams in the same way we treat world-class athletes, creative icons, and elite military? Arena Labs, Inc. (Arena Labs) is bringing the science of world-class performance, creative mastery, and elite teams to modern medicine. We are pioneering the field of High Performance Medicine® by leveraging an extraordinary team of men and women who have spent their respective careers contributing to an "arena", whether in sports, music, aviation, intelligence, art, or special operations.  Arena Labs has built an entire practice on this missing knowledge in medicine and we call it High Performance Medicine®. We are training surgical teams around the country in stress inoculation and training for Performance Under Pressure, rather than technical skill. To help surgical teams to perform at higher levels our work sits at the intersection of timeless principles of performance and modern technology. Our focus on High Performance Medicine® is on the team providing care - not the patient, or quality, or safety - because we deeply believe that if the team has been selected, trained, and cultivated at a level that breeds true high performance, then frontline staff can do the sacred work they entered medicine to do. The natural outcome is then quality, patient safety, and positive surgical outcomes.   Arena Labs has developed ArenaXR, a technology stack rooted in building performance solutions that account for a transformation in learning and self-awareness to understand performance in the demanding world of modern medicine. Changing perceptions is not enough to impact and change long-term performance of the dynamic, high-pressure environment of the operating room, or SOST maneuvers. ArenaXR is and immersive training system designed in partnership with the Cleveland Clinic to prepare for high-stress decision making and performance during critical scenarios where lives can hang in the balance. This Technology Readiness Level (TRL) -8 capability is a unique blend of state-of-the-art Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) technology integrated with cutting edge training techniques.