From Simulation to AI and Data Mining: Newly Aligned Hemming Institute Unites Hands-on Training with Research and Scholarship

Val G. Hemming Institute for Scholarship in Health Professions Education and Simulation kicks off a new era

School of Medicine Dean Emeritus Dr. Val G. Hemming did the honors at the September 16 ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Val G. Hemming Institute for Scholarship in Health Professions Education and Simulation From left: SOM Dean Dr. Eric Elster, USU President Dr. Jonathan Woodson, Dr. Hemming, Graduate School of Nursing Dean Carol Romano, Hemming Institute Medical Director Dr. Patrick Monahan, Hemming Institute Research Director Dr. Tasha Wyatt, and Department of Health Professions Chair Dr. Steven Durning. (Photo credit: Tom Balfour, USU)

September 17, 2026 by Melissa Reichley

Medical education at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) is entering a new chapter. Driven by the rapid expansion of medical knowledge and the evolving needs of the Military Health System (MHS), USU is consolidating two vital entities into the Val G. Hemming Institute for Scholarship in Health Professions Education and Simulation. 

The newly combined institute brings together the Val G. Hemming Simulation Center and the Center for Health Professions Education under the School of Medicine’s Health Professions Education (HPE) department, led by longtime faculty member and founding HPE chair Dr. Steve Durning. The merger is a strategic alignment of two complementary centers that elevates the work of both, creating an environment where theory and practice can more directly inform one another. By integrating deep educational research with simulation technology, the institute will strengthen simulation and related educational innovation and research. All are critical components of force development and readiness.

Nearly 100 faculty, staff, students, and guests attended the September 16 kickoff event, which featured remarks from leadership, a ceremonial ribbon-cutting by Hemming, and a tour of the facility’s advanced training bays and control rooms. 

Expressing profound gratitude for Hemming’s enduring legacy and vision, Durning noted, “We’re so grateful for the example that you are for us—as a leader, as a practitioner, as a scholar, and an educator for us to aspire to."

Attendees, including Dr. Val G. Hemming (center) and his family, tour the Wide Area Virtual Environment (WAVE) — a room-scale virtual reality theater — at the Val G. Hemming Simulation Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, during the Sept. 16 kickoff. (Photo credit: Tom Balfour, USU)

Opportunities for Collaboration and Innovation

The original Val G. Hemming Simulation Center, established in 1999 and named for the former dean of the School of Medicine, has long collected extensive data on clinical skills and biometric responses. Yet historically, they haven’t used that data extensively in scholarly research. The expertise of HPE faculty will now bridge this gap, allowing the institute to translate clinical training data and innovation into evidence-based educational practice. 

“From the Sim Center point of view, it opens up new avenues for scholarly work,” says Hemming Institute Co-director and Associate Dean of Simulation Education Dr. Patrick Monahan, an internist and retired Air Force colonel. “Bringing in HPE adds a dimension to the traditional research and innovation avenues we hope to tap into very shortly.”

As the largest medical simulation center within the Department of War, the Sim Center encompasses 30,000 square feet in its Silver Spring, Maryland, location, just three miles from USU. The facility includes multiple classrooms, clinical exam rooms, manikin labs, research space, and a room-scale, walk-in 3D virtual reality theater: the WAVE—Wide Area Virtual Environment. In the course of training hundreds of USU students every year via human simulation, manikin, and virtual reality simulation, Sim Center faculty collect valuable data. 

For example, in human simulation training, medical and nursing students practice their skills by interacting with actors who portray medical problems commonly encountered in outpatient situations. Sim Center instructors monitor students’ clinical skills development throughout their time at USU, from how they take histories to how they communicate with patients, assimilate information, perform physical examinations, develop clinical reasoning, and conduct assessments.

Students also practice procedures they can’t safely try on humans, such as intubation and intravenous insertion, on manikins and task trainers. The WAVE immerses learners into how they would think as a group to assess patients in adverse conditions and move them from an unstable to a stable location.

“It is a gold mine of data that can be assessed for scholarly application of clinical skills assessment,” says Monahan. Hemming Institute Co-director and HPE Vice Chair for Research Dr. Tasha Wyatt can’t wait to dig into it. 

By studying the Sim Center’s innovations, the HPE researchers—the physicians, nurses, med students, and physical therapists—can test educational theories, improve assessment methodologies, and secure additional extramural grant funding.

A simulation instructor demonstrates a medical training manikin, used to teach procedures students cannot safely practice on patients, during a tour of the Val G. Hemming Simulation Center on Sept. 16. (Photo credit: Tom Balfour, USU)

Leveraging AI for “Precision Education”

A prime opportunity for the merged units to partner on is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to mine the Sim Center’s data stores. Wyatt aims to translate these insights into "precision education." 

That means taking the data to look for patterns and themes to see what students are doing well and where they need support, she explains. “That identifies where the gaps in the curriculum are.”

Simulation research is evolving, Wyatt notes. It’s moving away from “does it work” basic efficacy studies, such as tracking patient infection rates, toward process-oriented research. She expects HPE scholars to take simulation research in new directions, thanks to her own critical focus on underlying processes and the expertise of her faculty colleagues. 

Several faculty members in the HPE department have been focusing on AI literacy across the educational community. They offer workshops on responsible AI use, from crafting research designs and conducting literature reviews to generating instructional content. By building this capacity now, the institute helps ensure that military medical educators remain at the forefront of technological responsibility. “We see it as the future, so we’re ahead of it,” says Wyatt. 

AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement

The integration of AI is already yielding tangible results. In their first official project together, Hemming Institute researchers are running clinical skills data through AI models to identify specific performance patterns. “Humans verify the data, we put it into modeling, and we give it to individual learners,” says Wyatt. “They take it to their internal medicine clerkship to work on areas needing development. Then they’re able to take ownership of their learning process.”

Monahan emphasizes that while AI streamlines data assimilation, it won’t replace the human element of medicine. “Our main goal is the development of clinical skills, which requires face-to-face interaction,” he says. “Physical examination, interview skills, and patient-provider communication cannot be displaced by AI. Our main application for AI right now is to make assessment of the data we collect more efficient, understandable, and scholarly.”

Meeting MHS Needs with Experts in Medical Education Teaching

This consolidation is vital for the MHS, which faces a pressing need for leaders with deep educational expertise. Historically, the medical field has relied on the apprentice model, explains Wyatt. “People often assume that if you are a good clinician, you are a good teacher, but it is not the same. We fill that gap.”

Wyatt says graduates report that the training they get in the HPE program helps them in their formal roles, such as program directors, deans, and department chairs, but also in their teaching of residents, patients, members of interprofessional teams, and people they supervise. 

By educating military professionals in both innovative clinical practice and educational theory, the institute builds capacity within the system. It may help retain military officers by offering top-tier credentialing and leadership training within the MHS, rather than forcing them to seek it elsewhere.

School of Medicine Dean Emeritus Dr. Val G. Hemming’s four children and several grandchildren attended the kickoff event to celebrate with him. (Photo credit: Tom Balfour, USU)

Looking Toward the Future

Ultimately, the Hemming Institute aims to emphasize the social and collaborative nature of learning and performance. As the leaders of the institute point out, health professions education is about interactions—between educators and learners, and among students themselves. By formalizing this consolidation, the university helps ensure that the next generation of military medical providers emerge better equipped and more adaptable, grounded in both clinical practice and the science of educational research.

In his keynote address at the kickoff event, retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Robert Armstrong, executive director of Old Dominion University’s Sentara Center for Simulation and Immersive Professional Skills Center, framed USU as a “50-year institutional bet that keeps paying off” by preparing resilient military healthcare leaders. While healthcare simulation has shown its effectiveness as a training tool over the last 25 years, he said the "next bet" for the Hemming Institute is to become the home for the analytic and predictive uses of modeling and simulation across clinical care, population health, and health systems operations. “This new institute is uniquely positioned to be the reference case for how that movement happens,” said Armstrong. 

The long-term intent for the institute is to be recognized throughout the MHS as a reliable, professional resource for innovative simulation education and a resource for scholarly work within the field, across the many military treatment facilities whose mission is graduate medical education. “They all have simulation centers. We can be a source of guidance for them regarding scholarly work associated with those efforts,” says Monahan. 

That role is already taking shape. The Sim Center was one of five academic centers in a military-civilian consortium, established by the Defense Health Agency (DHA) in 2021, that set the first expert-validated performance standards for 20 combat casualty care skills, ranging from emergency airway procedures to battlefield blood transfusion. Published in September in Military Medicine, the results give simulation instructors across the Military Health System concrete competency targets to train toward — a first for these skills. USU plans to house the new standards in a collection on Deployed Medicine, the MHS's online training platform, so any military health professional can use them.

“There’s an incredible opportunity here,” adds Wyatt, ”one that has the potential to turn our program into the beacon or envy of every other simulation center.”