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Sarah Baillie - Inventor of the haptic cow

I was brought up on a farm in the Cotswolds – my older sister says I began saying I wanted to be a vet when I was three! Now I’m the inventor of a haptic cow and I’m involved full-time in educational research, outreach and developing new computer-based teaching products.

I studied veterinary medicine at Bristol University and also did the final year of a science degree, so I gained a BSc in anatomical science. I really enjoyed it but I still wanted to be a vet, and spent some 20 years in practice in Wiltshire and then Scotland.

But I fell while calving a cow and damaged my back. A few years later I had more back problems. Veterinary work involves a lot of lifting – even when you work with cats and dogs. I knew I couldn’t carry on.

I looked around and considered doing an MBA, but an IT conversion course at the University of Glasgow caught my attention and I started studying part-time. That’s is how I encountered haptic technology.

‘Haptic’ is a Greek word, relating to the sense of touch. When using a computer we are used to hearing and seeing things, but with haptic technology you create the illusion of feeling around 3D objects. A few programmers have used it to help medics learn how to do keyhole surgery. I realised I could use haptics to solve a problem I’d had teaching vet students do internal examinations – the things its really hard to teach and learn because you can’t see what is going on.

It took many years to get it right. I did a masters and then a PhD focussing on the technology. The haptic cow I created enables students to carry out a rectal examination and feel round the cow’s uterus. The procedure is important for pregnancy diagnosis among other things. Later I developed a haptic horse so students can feel the difference between the gut with and without colic.

Now I teach at the Royal Veterinary College and I continue to work on haptic technology. We’ve got a game coming out for trainee health professionals to help them improve their manual 3D skills - there’s a version of this for schools to engage students in science. The haptic cow is my intellectual property, but the games are commercialised through a Swedish company.

I do public demonstrations which I really enjoy. We were at the Royal Society this summer, and we’ve other exhibitions coming up. I hope readers of the UKRC blog will be able to come and feel the technology for themselves.

Sarah Baillie is a Senior Lecturer in Veterinary Medicine at the Royal Veterinary College and is a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. She is also a founder member of ViEW (Veterinary Education Worldwide). You can see a demonstration of the haptic cow and horse on VetPulse TV.

Comments:

Ruth Wilson (UKRC moderator)

Thanks, Sarah, for being one of our bloggers. I would absolutely love to get my hands on (in?) your haptic cow! My father was a vet, and as a child my brother and I would be put in the back of his car to go out on farm visits with him, so we saw calves being born and .... well, all sorts of things.

I am interested to know how much your thinking as an entrepreneur has developed through this whole process. Were you already interested in the business side of things through being a partner in a veterinary practice? What are the most important things you learned about developing, patenting and commercialising a product?

I wonder, because I think this may be a time of invention and new business start-ups, and women in science, engineering, technology have an important role to play in this.

Sarah Baillie

Hi Ruth,

If you want to have a go on the Haptic Cow and our haptic computer games we will be at the Royal Institution Family Fun Day on November 7th 2009. More details on the Royal Institution website: http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayEvent&id=943

In answer to your questions, when I was developing the Haptic Cow and the other simulators (and when doing my PhD) it helped to have had a background in a small business (a veterinary practice). It made me very conscious of the need to consider the 'customer' i.e. the requirements from a learner's, teacher's and faculty's perspective. Serving the customer's needs - whoever that may be and whatever service or product we develop / supply - is central to our success.

Another thing I found helpful when developing the simulators (which are teaching tools) was my background as a workplace trainer (veterinary students spend 6 months on placements with veterinary surgeons before graduating). I was very well aware of the learning and teaching challenges when trying to teach something you can't see! (i.e. an internal examination).

Sarah

Rachel Tobbell

Hi Sarah, It's interesting to read about your career path, which has moved in an IT and teaching direction over time. One of my children is interested in working with animals and so studying to be a vet is clearly an option. I wonder does training as a vet lead to range of career paths, or do the majority of qualified vets need to serve their time in a vetinary pratice before they could branch into other areas?

Also does your story imply that women may not always have the physical strength that the role of vet requires?

Kaye Heyes

Hi Sarah, thank you for sharing your interesting story.
Creating a haptic cow (or horse!) sounds very expensive! Did you get financial support in order to build and test your prototype or did you self-fund?

Sarah Baillie

Hi Rachel,

Most veterinary students do go on to become practicing vets. I think initially i.e. straight after graduation, that over 90% go into practice. However, there are other options e.g. in industry, research, government and, in my case, computing science and education! Quite a few vets do end up taking quite different career paths e.g. in journalism, teaching, etc. But most of our students do really want to be vets and so that's what they spend most of their working lives doing.

It is quite a physical job but if strength is important in most instances there are techniques and tools available to use.

The vet schools (there are now 7 in the UK - Bristol, Cambridge, London, Nottingham, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh) have information on their websites about the degree courses - vet medicine, animal science, vet nursing - and may have Open Days too. So if your daughter wants more information the websites would be a good place to start.

I hope that answers your questions.

Sarah

Sarah Baillie

Hi Kaye,
The prototype Haptic Cow was developed over nearly 5 years while I was undertaking a Masters in IT and then a PhD in Computing Science. So I was a student at that point and studying for those degrees. The simulator was a product of that work / research. As such I suppose you could say financial input was relatively small but it took up lots of time!
Sarah

Yonghee

"Haptic Cow !
How creative you are!
It is great to see how you develop your career path.
Good luck with your exhibition!"

Kath Littlejohn

Your haptic cow and other educational simulators appear to be the answer everyone has needed for so many years. As a student nurse in the early seventies, I gave my first intra-muscular injection to a well-solid dummy buttock, which made my first human patient feel like butter, in comparison. Other 'firsts' in nursing which would have been helped by a simulator were: sub-cutaneous insulin injection (luckily, the living human patient knew what to do when my already-outdated training hadn't taken account of changes in technology), administering suppositories and enemas, inserting nasal and urethral cathetarisation, manual evacuation of bowels, removing sutures and probably many more procedures of that type. Best wishes with all your future projects.