The product demonstration room at Immersion Medical in Gaithersburg, MD, is a veritable arcade of medical simulation. There you can find a lineup of electromechanical, sensor-riddled, computerized devices, all coupled to virtual models of the human body. With these gadgets, students can practice the routine task of inserting a catheter into a patient's hand, or more difficult procedures like a colonoscopy or even a lung biopsy. But these simulators don't just provide vivid computerized visual renderings of human innards. They also re-create something equally critical: how all the injecting, cutting, inserting and palpating actually feel to the doctor performing them.

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