Lack of financial means should not be a barrier to education, especially when it may enhance patient safety. We are providing the Virtual Anesthesia Machine (VAM) simulation free of charge as an experiment in sustainable philanthropy. Our hypothesis is that free high quality web simulations will attract heavy traffic which in turn will motivate corporations to divert some of their public relations budget to support teams developing and maintaining free web sites and simulations such as VAM. Our initial outlook has been tested by the harsh reality that corporate sponsorship has funded less than 5% of costs (mainly team wages) annually and donations total $510 since the inception of the VAM program in 1999.
Faced with dissolution of the VAM team because of lack of funds, we have no choice but to start experimenting with different methods to attain sustainability over the next few months while continuing to provide a VAM simulation free of charge.