TEM Journal. Volume 10, Issue 3, Pages 1141‐1148, ISSN 2217‐8309, DOI: 10.18421/TEM103-18, August 2021. TEM Journal – Volume 10 / Number 3 / 2021. 1141 Using Augmented Reality to Enhance Medical Education in Heart Diseases: Action Design Research Dimah Alahmadi, Hind Bitar, Hana ALsaadi, Lamees Boker, Linah Alghamdi King Abdulaziz University, Edarah St, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Abstract – Augmented reality (AR) is one of the leading communication technologies being investigated and applied in several contexts. Medical training and health education are two of the fields pioneering the innovation of AR to improve the quality of medical outcomes. In this action design research (ADR), we developed an android mobile application called “CardioSim” for medical educational simulation that helps students enhance and improve their understanding and learning process. Functions are implemented to explain specific scenarios of heart failure disease and the symptoms associated with this disease, in addition to the sounds of different heartbeats and models of heart anatomy. CardioSim’s usability has been evaluated by 10 experts from the simulation centre using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and the results were acceptable. Keywords – Augmented reality, medical simulation, heart diseases, heart anatomy, medical education, Action design research 1. Introduction AR is a technology that enhances the real world with content generated by a computer. DOI: 10.18421/TEM103-18 https://doi.org/10.18421/TEM103-18 Corresponding author: Dimah Alahmadi, King Abdulaziz University, Edarah St, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Email: dalahmadi@kau.edu.sa Received: 13 November 2020. Revised: 06 July 2021. Accepted: 12 July 2021. Published: 27 August 2021. © 2021 Dimah Alahmadi et al; published by UIKTEN. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs 4.0 License. The article is published with Open Access at www.temjournal.com This content can include images, audio, video, textual information, and three-dimensional (3D) objects. These augmentations can enhance a person’s knowledge and understanding of their surroundings [1]. Today, the use of this technology has increased in many fields, including education, entertainment, e- commerce, and marketing. The usage of augmented reality technology has continuously increased in educational environments. There are many implementations of the AR. For example, the AR is often used in discovery-based learning, such as in museums and astronomical education. Also, the content of books can be supplemented with three-dimensional presentation and interactive learning experiences. Additionally, the AR can be applied in skills training environments, such as in airplane maintenance training. Students can leverage many benefits when learning in AR environments, such as motivation, increased satisfaction, and concentration [2]. According to the World Health Organization (2020), the number one cause of death around the world, at an estimated 17.9 million deaths every year, is cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) [3]. As such, the heart’s structural characteristics and functions should be well studied by the future physicians of the world. One way to facilitate understanding is the use of visual presentation, since this organ is difficult to demonstrate [4]. This paper presents the development of an android mobile application called “CardioSim” that helps learners gain a better understanding of the heart and some of its diseases based on identified learning outcomes. The 3D heart object makes it easy to distinguish between different heart failure cases comfortably and interactively. Furthermore, CardioSim allows the learner to assess the targeted learning objective outcomes. Simply, this app helps the users by showing the anatomy of blood flow to and from the heart using AR technology. In addition, it tests students on whether they can identify heart failure based on different shapes and heartbeat sounds in a set of scenarios using AR technology. CardioSim displays three heart cases: the normal heart, mitral stenosis, and mitral incompetence. The