Simulation comes of age

Medical simulation has actually been around a very long time. I still remember my first encounter with a ''high fidelity'' simulation back when I was a newbie in medical education. It was developed by Bill Harless It ran on a mainframe somewhere (there were only mainframes in those days). The simulation began with a colour video of the patient walking down a beach in southern California, and ended with her dying of a heart attack. Well, not exactly. That was one possible ending, which was decided by the digital grim reaper, a random number generator somewhere in the bowels of the computer. In between, the candidate could ask the computer any question she wanted by typing it in, in ordinary language, and the patient would respond appropriately (well, most of the time).