# SimuVersity Medical Center: Pain and opioid management training in diverse patient populations

> **NIH NIH R41** · PALMETTO INNOVATIVE EDUCATION, LLC · 2024 · $290,134

## Abstract

Summary
 Management of chronic pain and opioid use/misuse is challenging for clinicians and students,
especially when working with diverse and underserved patient populations. Not all people are affected
by chronic pain and opioid use concerns equally, and there are higher prevalence rates in women,
individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and people residing in rural areas. Medical and
health professional schools, students and practitioners need more educational resources to help
address the complex problems associated with the management of chronic pain, opioid use, and the
impact of diversity on clinical outcomes. Very few low-cost, flexible, highly-engaging, and effective
learning resources are available to help the healthcare workforce best learn to manage these unique
health concerns. Gamification holds promise as a user-friendly, fun, engaging and effective teaching
strategy, especially for healthcare applications. Palmetto Innovative Education LLC provides innovative
software and gaming solutions to help engage interprofessional teams of healthcare students,
researchers and clinicians with unique training opportunities. We seek to develop a convenient and
engaging educational platform to provide training in pain and opioid management as well as teach
empirically-supported communication strategies for optimizing treatment adherence. Typically, training
health professional students and practitioners via traditional didactic approaches falls short of engaging
learners in a manner that promotes application of knowledge. Conversely, gamification offers a lower-
cost, high quality, standardized, easily-accessible and flexible approach to healthcare provider
education that promotes application of acquired knowledge and increased engagement of learners.
Palmetto Innovative Education seeks to capitalize on the PI’s expertise as a pain management
clinician/educator and scientist, and combine these skills with his company’s game development
expertise and experience to create a novel, innovative and engaging educational game platform for
teaching students and practitioners alike about modern, empirically-supported strategies for pain and
opioid management. In this phase-I project, we seek to: (Aim-1) Develop a multi-platform educational
and interactive 3D digital game (SimuVersity Medical Center) to teach health professional students and
practicing clinicians modern and empirically validated strategies for pain and opioid management in
patients from a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds and with a variety of presenting pain and
substance use problems, and (Aim-2) Compare the effectiveness of this new educational activity/game
in meeting clinical learning objectives and outcomes compared to traditional didactic approaches to
provider and student education.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10919937
- **Project number:** 1R41DA059281-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** PALMETTO INNOVATIVE EDUCATION, LLC
- **Principal Investigator:** Jeffrey J Borckardt
- **Activity code:** R41 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $290,134
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-08-15 → 2025-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10919937

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10919937, SimuVersity Medical Center: Pain and opioid management training in diverse patient populations (1R41DA059281-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-12 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10919937. Licensed CC0.

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