Virtual Experience Veterinary is a travelling Virtual Reality training experience developed by Boehringer Ingelheim, the USDA Agricultural Research Service and Grupo Asís for students of the Veterinary Scholars Program. The solution precisely recreates a US poultry farm and lets future veterinarians practise diagnoses, safety protocols and laboratory work in an environment that US law keeps closed to them until they graduate. The experience has toured universities and professional events in the United States and Puerto Rico, opening a hands-on training pathway that was previously inaccessible to students.
Training the veterinarians of the future when they can't physically enter the farm.
The US agri-food health system doesn't allow unqualified veterinarians to enter poultry farms, a necessary rule to guarantee biosecurity. But this restriction leaves veterinary students with no chance of real practice during their training, just when they most need exposure to the professional environment. Boehringer Ingelheim and the USDA Agricultural Research Service, through the Veterinary Scholars Program, teamed up with Grupo Asís to fill this training gap. The challenge: to recreate the veterinarian's entire work on an industrial farm without physically setting foot on it.