How VR and AI prepared a new generation of CNAs in Minnesota

Minnesota's long-term care sector — the homes and services that look after older and dependent people — faces a chronic shortage of staff. At the same time, many New Americans (people born outside the United States, and their children) are looking for a way into a stable healthcare career. New Americans in LTC was built to connect those two facts.

It is a consortium effort. The South Central Service Cooperative (SCSC) works alongside the Minnesota Council of Churches, Mankato Adult Basic Education, Blue Earth County Employment Services and CILC, with MetaMedicsVR providing the virtual reality, artificial intelligence and mobile technology behind the training.

For many New Americans, the obstacle to a healthcare career is not ability — it is everything around it. The program set out to tackle four barriers at once:

• Limited English proficiency, which makes technical training hard to follow.
• A lack of basic resources — transportation, childcare, housing.
• Difficulty navigating public support systems.
• A workforce shortage in the long-term care sector that needed filling.

Rather than offering training alone, the program wraps three components around each participant:

• Support services — help with transportation, housing, childcare and technology; guidance through public programs such as SNAP and MFIP; and interpreters in Spanish and Somali.
• Bilingual, VR-powered technical training built by MetaMedicsVR, covering medical terminology, healthcare communication, cultural adaptation and foundational skills.
• Job placement — partnerships with more than ten long-term care facilities, virtual job fairs and one-on-one follow-up support.

MetaMedicsVR's piece is the technology that makes the training work in someone's own language: virtual reality to practise skills, AI to support the learning, and mobile apps to reach people wherever they are.

The program tackles two problems with a single answer: the long-term care workforce shortage, and the integration of New Americans into stable, well-paid healthcare careers. By pairing wraparound social support with VR and AI training in a learner's own language, it turns a population that traditional training tends to leave behind into a pipeline of CNAs and allied health workers — a model that can be repeated wherever both needs exist.

If you recognise your own situation here, let's talk about how it could work for you.