Newly emerging digital technologies offer the potential for ongoing measurement of the performance of an individual, monitoring their learning curves for new skills and defining thresholds of achievement. They can offer a safe training environment for familiarization with new procedures. To enhance access and control of these virtual environments, platform independent programming languages such as Java can be used. The lecture describes the general principles underlying the need for integration of different training media and refers specifically to the Exeter Virtual Worlds (EVW) Shoulder Arthroscopy Simulator which is designed to teach surgical pattern recognition skills via an interactive media, using a 'thin client' over a distributed computer architecture to illustrate this. The development of networking computer architectures will assist the assimilation of this information. The development of such interfaces now offers the opportunity to collect statistically significant data from such simulation systems.