In Japan, student doctors at a medical college are now able to practice diagnosis on a patient that can get close to death at a touch of a switch. It is a robot simulator.

SYNOPSIS: It is often only a matter of a few minutes, sometimes just seconds, between life and death, when a person's heart of breathing stops. For a doctor, it is a time when he must know exactly how to react.

This electronic dummy is seen as one way of giving doctors the practice that is so important in dealing with patient who could be close to death. In many such cases the margin for error is very small. The dummy is called a `Patient Simulator' and it has been developed at the Engineering Institute of Tokyo Women's Medical College.

The simulator consists of an electronic head, thorax and arm.. and it can reproduce virtually the same symptoms as a human being who is in need of intensive care.

In this case, the microcomputer which controls the dummy has put it into a state of unconsciousness..and the student doctor can make a check on various symptoms, learning how to recognise them. A television monitor lists a detailed register of the exact symptoms.

Once a student has made his diagnosis, he can start treatment...in this case a chest massage to start the heart beating and then artificial respiration, to encourage breathing.

The microcomputer responds to the treatment...a graph records the heart beat... allowing the student to continue with treatment of the dummy.

A further check on the pupils of the dummy's eye. In this case, the response appears to be normal...and, checking with the readout on the television monitor, confirmation that the patient is on the way to recovery. This is something that will happen again and again, giving the students valuable practice with no risk to life.