Coming soon? CPR training… for the Wii

Remember the item last week about a Nintendo DS device to entice reluctant diabetic kids to test their blood sugar?

Now some crafty biomedical engineering students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are developing a program to utilize the Wii to teach CPR. And the American Heart Association is so impressed that they’ve ponied up $50K to fund its development.

Senior undergrads started the open-source project, created on computers and meant to be transmitted to Wii systems via WiFi, at the start of the spring semester. After a presentation in May, the AHA offered the cash to help the project survive.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham indicates that as soon as this fall, the program could be available for download on the AHA website. While the effectiveness of such a program remains to be seen, the upside is that you won’t have to make out with that creepy death-mask doll (seriously, she’s modeled after a body found floating in the Seine) to learn CPR. Yay, technology!

In a statement, a professor overseeing the project corporate-spoke:

“The Heart Association’s high interest in our students’ innovations points to the potential of this project and how it fits in with its desire to deliver reliable CPR education to the masses.”

[Source: Ars Technica]