With Level 3’s philanthropy mission to help children and families, we focus our efforts on activities that will make a lasting impact. This quarter we have partnered with GiGi’s playhouse, an organization with a mission to change the way the world views Down Syndrome and send a global message of acceptance for all.

World Down syndrome Day is celebrated on March 21^st to honor Down Syndrome people who have 3 of their 21^st chromosome. We joined the celebration by raising donations to Gigi’s playhouse and asking our employees and community to wear crazy socks, highlighting our differences as individuals.

As shown in previous posts, simulation is an increasingly popular tool for training healthcare professionals. Across the U.S. and worldwide, teaching hospitals, medical schools, and nursing schools are employing realistic simulation labs to hone training for future doctors, nurses, and physician assistants. And we've delved into new areas where simulation can help other professionals when faced with life or death decisions, such as police training and EMS professionals.

This post will add another area where simulation offers unique advantages in training medical professionals – cadaver or "wet" labs. Simulation environments for wet labs also present some unique challenges, but the benefits are invaluable for training. Keep reading to learn more about how the Level 3 SimStation simulation suite adapts to cadaver lab training requirements. 

Digital signage has been around for some time with many successful applications, from restaurants to shopping centers to building lobbies and transportation hubs. The advantages of digital display technologies are numerous and well-understood, but companies are taking a closer look at this solution for a new area  that is not so well-understood – hybrid workplaces.

Come with us, for a bit, for a walk back in time to the 1980s. That decade saw the dawn of the personal computing era. Until the advent of the personal computer (PC), computing power lay in data centers in mainframes and minicomputers. There were no such things as “apps,” but there were complex applications to run financial and operational aspects of companies.

Most importantly, however, before PCs (we mean all of them here of any operating system), the IT department controlled all that computing power. In those days, IT was called by many other names (sometimes not flattering ones), but generally, professional workers had little control over what IT did, and they might wait years to be able to take advantage of that computing power to make their job easier.

Why is being disciplined so difficult? The results of discipline are amazing. It feels great after you apply discipline, you feel like you accomplished something. It literally makes you a better person. So why are our brains wired to make it hard? I am sure evolutionarily speaking, there is some reason behind it. Lounging certainly allows you to conserve calories and stay alive longer when food is scarce. Adrenaline will get us going when it is absolutely required but being at a heightened state of activity is not sustainable for too long. And binge-watching Real Housewives of New Jersey is just so dang appealing! The draw to being undisciplined is always present.

Managed support services are well understood and utilized in the IT world, and they are increasingly popular for various reasons. Perhaps one reason not discussed as much is the sheer breadth of technology in use today in organizations of all sizes. In IT, support has to cover services like cloud infrastructure, SaaS (software as a service), networks, wireless and mobile computing, security and cybersecurity, and much more. This breadth requires a significant amount of expertise and training, as well as specialized tools for monitoring and user support.

AV systems in organizations have gone through a similar evolution; they now encompass a wide range of technology and have joined the IT and IoT world as IP-based connected systems requiring the same security and monitoring levels as other IT systems. That means that user support must also include specialized training and tools, further burdening chronically understaffed IT departments. Managed support services for AV can ease the burden on organizations and provide the specialized services needed. Let's explore several models below and their potential benefits for your organization.

Simulation is a fast-growing area of interest in the healthcare education field. Universities and training hospitals across the U.S. are building custom simulation labs to give future nurses, doctors, and PAs real, interactive experiences in a safe and controlled environment. 

And healthcare isn’t the only industry where simulation technology is sparking interest. This blog is part two of a series of blogs that will explore new use cases for simulation technology.

Today, we’re turning an eye toward police training simulation labs. Police academies realize the potential for simulation to provide invaluable training experiences to new and current police officers in Miami, FL, and across the U.S. Keep reading to learn more about what you need to set up sim labs for police training. 

Once upon a time, IT was IT, AV was AV, and never the twain shall meet. Well, those days are long gone. AV devices are smart, connected, special purpose computers, and the digital convergence of video, audio, and communication over IP has ensured that they all meet on the same networks. 

While in the past, the isolation of AV systems meant that they had some immunity from hacking and online attacks, today, they may be as vulnerable as any other connected system. IoT security is a much-discussed subject these days, and AV devices are part of the IoT (Internet of Things). The problem? While other connected computers and systems have benefitted from either native or third-party solutions that add layers of security to those systems, AV technology has lagged in that regard.