SL Event: Palomar West Hospital Opening

Blogging live from the opening today (Feb. 25) of the Palomar Medical Center West hospital prototype, a real hospital scheduled to be built in North San Diego County and completed in 2011. It has a virtual presence in Second Life with Cisco Systems providing all the — for lack of a better word — whizbang high-tech networking genius technology that separates the planned hospital from your run-of-the-mill medical center. The virtual agency Millions of Us built the SL version, a pretty faithful recreation of the prototype. The tour, once I figured it out with help from Lyra MillionsofUs, was interesting. The lobby, a patient room, a procedure room (FKA an operating room) and a rooftop helipad are included in the tour.

If your avie needs its gall bladder out, just take the limo ride here and pick up a RFID bracelet (personalized with your avie name!) and a Cisco HUD, which will guide you through the tour. Then walk ahead and to the left, click the elevator and find yourself in a patient room. Watch the video all the way through, take the full-body scan, then click the patient door to be taken to the procedure room for the operation. It blacks you out like anesthesia, then lets you wake up gradually back in the patient room. You can also play with — I mean, operate — the bedside control panel. Although I’m still waiting for the nurse to answer my call.

Pictures below: Top, the hospital on its “green” campus, designed with a number of “green” initiatives to reduce its environmental impact. (Although, as Nobody Fugazi noted, after rescuing me from no-avie-land outside the patient room, it doesn’t use solar panels.) Bottom, I use the bedside computer to control blinds, watch TV, play on the Web or call a nurse. And that’s a m