In what has been dubbed the “most watched YouTube video in history,” a team of trained medical assistants train dogs to do their jobs.
The footage is one of the most viewed videos on the channel’s YouTube channel.
“It’s a video that will go down as one of our top YouTube videos,” said Kelly McCarron, co-founder of the medical assistants training dog project, in an interview with The Daily Beast.
“It has been watched over 100 million times.”
The medical assistants are trained to be able to detect signs of a person’s medical conditions and perform surgeries with their trained dogs, a task that has been previously done with dogs in a human medical facility.
The team at the Center for the Future of Medicine at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, is also trying to help humans navigate medical emergencies.
“We’re working to make the transition from the hospital to the field safer and more efficient, which is one reason we’ve created a medical assistants team that is trained to detect, treat and save people,” said McCarrons co-founders Alex Wylie and David Kowalczyk.
“Our goal is to help people live with more confidence.”
“We have a goal to create a community that will be more inclusive, where we’ll be able help one another more effectively and more efficiently,” Wylierczyk said.
“The medical assistant team is a way to help that happen.”
The team of medical assistants is based at the Minneapolis Clinic, and it’s part of a growing group of training dogs.
“There’s a tremendous amount of work that’s being done in the field of veterinary training dogs and how we can utilize our dogs to help human practitioners,” said John Luecke, the director of the Center.
“These dogs are used for a variety of different tasks that require a lot of dexterity, coordination, and a lot more coordination.
We see a tremendous need to bring these dogs into the field, to train them to help patients.”
Lueckes group was formed in 2009 after a collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Health.
“They’re all incredibly smart, well-trained dogs,” said Luecike.
“There’s no reason that they wouldn’t work in the human medical field as well.”
“The goal is just to do the best we can with what we have,” said Wyliest.
“We have two training dogs that we train on the weekends.”
They’re currently working on improving their training with the use of virtual reality, virtual reality goggles, and other technologies.
They also have a second project that is currently being designed to help treat a human with a disease called Munchausen by Proxy.
The two dogs were trained with different technology in different locations around the country.
“When you have a medical dog, they have a lot to offer,” said Kowalyczyk of the program.
“When you’re talking about human medical, you’re not going to have a canine that can detect the presence of a disease in a patient, which can be a real issue.
So we’re going to work to do better with that technology, so we can use the medical dog in a much more appropriate way.”
The project, called MUSHAM, aims to help veterinarians better diagnose disease and treat the patient better.
“What the training does is basically teaches them how to spot people and their signs of disease,” said Stacey G. Wylies, the project director.
“That’s a great thing, because it’s a skill that can be really valuable in the future.”
But the goal is really just to teach them what they need to do to be a great medical assistant.
“It’s also hoped that this project will help bring medical dogs into communities that are underrepresented in veterinary care.”
A lot of veterinary people don’t have access to veterinary training,” said Gylies. “
And there’s a need for more of them to be trained, so they can serve as part of the veterinary workforce.”
“A lot of veterinary people don’t have access to veterinary training,” said Gylies.
“If they’re trained, they can do really good work, but if they don’t, then they’re really struggling.”
“They can be trained in the right way to diagnose people,” he said.
McCarron said there’s an increased demand for trained medical assistant dogs, and she hopes that their program will help provide an opportunity for veterinary training.
“Hopefully, there’s going to be more veterinary training and veterinary work available in the community,” she said.
