A start-up led by a video game developer has created an app that allows medical students and doctors to practice minimally invasive surgeries using smartphones or tablets.

Level EX developed the application, which is based on actual patient cases, to help surgeons develop the hand-eye coordination necessary to navigate a 3D setting prior to a patient procedure; the app has also been qualified as a surgical training tool for physicians to gain Continuing Medical Education credits from the American Medical Association.

About 60% of physicians already use virtual reality technology to gain expertise for surgical techniques that use endoscopic tools. But surgical simulators today tend to be large devices that run in multi-million-dollar simulation centers.

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