Games developers in the West Midlands have been using their talents to save lives by creating virtual environments to train doctors and nurses.

Companies from the computer game sector have been showing how their technology is being used in medical simulation to enable clinicians to train using lifelike scenarios and props at a MedilinkWM event in the region.

Among those is Blitz Games Studios which has used characters originally in a karaoke game based on a reality television show to train medical students.

Mary Matthews, strategy and business development director at the Leamington firm, said it took less than six months to develop the programme using technology from the game Karaoke Revolution American Idol.

She added: “We have taken game technology and game design skills and tailored them to medical training.

“We created a trainer for first responders at the scene of an accident called Triage Trainer, and more recently a virtual patient which will help medical students to understand a patient’s deterioration.

“Medical students probably spend less time with patients than ever before so being about to spot a patient deteriorating is very important.

“They need to be able to recognise the fact that a patient is going downhill and assess then and understand whether they have been successful or not.”

Ms Matthews said the firm’s technology allows clinicians to customise personal traits in virtual people to help them train for specific issues – from ethnicity, age and weight to nose size, eye shape or colour.

Ms Matthews said the medical sector accounted for a key part of the firm’s growth plans.

She said: “It is a growing part of our company and it is part of our passion to make games that make a difference. We also have a divergence strategy because the entertainment games industry is very volatile.

“It is a natural extension of how we see our games working.”

Blitz Games was one of several local games firms to take part in a MedilinkWM event at Birmingham’s Centennial Hall on June 7.

Hagley-based Mixed Reality Studios, Birmingham Science Park firm Daden and Harborne-based Paragon Simulation also spoke at the event, along with speakers from Hollier Simulation Centre, University of Birmingham, University Hospital Birmingham and Warwick University.