Do you store audio recordings of the conversations?

No. We never store audio — only the text transcript of the conversation, which the feedback is based on. Voice biometrics are never stored.

How long is data stored, and who has access?

Transcripts and feedback are stored for as long as the account is active, and are permanently deleted when the account is deleted. Employees can download everything or delete their account themselves at any time. Managers see aggregated figures, never transcripts.

Can SimLab be used to monitor or assess employees?

No — and in pilot mode it is technically locked off. Individual results are not shared with the employer, and the feedback is the employee's own basis for learning.

Does SimLab replace courses, role-play and simulation?

No. SimLab is a supplement. Organised exercises produce excellent learning, but they need rooms, equipment and several people present. SimLab is the training in between.

Can we create our own scenarios?

Yes. Describe a situation in your own words, or upload an incident report or procedure, and the scenario is built from it. The document is analysed in memory only and is never stored.

What equipment is needed?

Just a browser and a microphone. SimLab runs in the browser on a phone or computer — no VR headsets, no installation. Headphones are recommended.

Which languages are supported?

The conversation itself and the feedback can be conducted in Norwegian, English, Swedish and Danish. The interface is available in Norwegian and English.

How do we get started?

Book a demo. We show you the simulator in 15 minutes and propose a pilot that fits. There is no self-service sign-up — we set the organisation up together with you.

Digital training arena

Practise before it counts.

SimLab lets employees practise demanding conversations in a safe, realistic simulator — try different approaches, get concrete feedback, and practise again. Without a real patient, student, service user or colleague having to be in the situation.

Book a demo See how it works

No audio recordings, everTraining data stored in the EEAReady to use in minutes

Frustrated family member

Health and care · Medium difficulty

In progress

Say “help” at any time to get coaching

Feedback · Session completed

Strong effort

Acknowledgment8.7

Active listening7.9

Calm and presence8.5

De-escalating communication8.1

Safety

A safe space to practise, without consequences.

Learning

Concrete, immediate feedback.

Mastery

Repetition that builds skill over time.

The challenge

It is hard to feel confident about something you rarely get to practise.

Courses provide knowledge and understanding. But real confidence in demanding situations requires practice. Employees need to regulate themselves, listen, assess and communicate under pressure — and that takes repeated training over time.

The limitation is rarely the quality of the training you already do. It is availability.

Role-play, simulation and VR work — they are just rare

Organised exercises produce excellent learning and should remain central. But they need rooms, equipment, facilitators and several people present at once. VR additionally needs headsets, setup, maintenance and booking, and some people find it uncomfortable. In practice the training becomes episodic — and an individual rarely gets to repeat the exact thing they struggle with.

And practice is unevenly distributed

Who gets to practise what becomes a matter of chance: some meet a given situation often, others almost never. Shift patterns, geography, placement site and access to instructors decide. SimLab gives everyone the same basis for practice — the same situations, the same criteria, and the ability to repeat.

Practise when it fits

Training goes where there is room for it in the working day — not only on scheduled course days.

Your situations

Scenarios can be adapted to local roles and the risk situations you actually face.

Practise, fail, try again

No social risk. No colleagues watching. No real person who has to be in the situation.

Training and practice is a recurring duty

Where work involves a risk of being subjected to violence and threats, the employer shall ensure that employees are given the necessary training and practice in a) preventing and handling violence and threats, b) the use of any safety equipment. The employer shall ensure that training and practice is repeated and adapted to significant changes in the risk assessment and otherwise when necessary.

Norwegian Regulations on the Performance of Work, section 3A-5

The duty recurs — it is not a one-off course. SimLab makes the practice repeatable and documentable.

A supplement — not a replacement

SimLab is not meant to replace courses, supervision, role-play or meeting real people. It makes it possible to practise more often, more deliberately and with a lower threshold between the organised learning activities.

How SimLab works

A learning loop, not a test

It is the repetition that builds the skill. A session takes a few minutes.

01
Prepare
Make a short mental plan first: What do I know about the person I am about to meet? What might work well? What do I do if my own stress rises?
02
Practise
Speak with an AI character that responds dynamically to what is said, and to how the conversation develops.
03
Review
Go through the conversation turn by turn, with suggested alternative phrasings at the moments that mattered.
04
Reflect
What happened inside me? What helped me stay balanced? Your own assessment sits alongside the structured feedback.
05
Try again
Take the same situation again with an adjusted approach, and feel the difference. This is where the learning sticks.

Situations

Practise the situations you actually face

Not generic industry examples, but concrete encounters employees recognise.

A relative who disagrees with the care plan
A student escalating in frustration
A citizen reacting strongly to a decision
A patient frustrated by waiting time
Someone resisting what has to be done
A difficult conversation after an incident
An employee who has to receive difficult news
Someone in grief or despair
Situations where the right call is to withdraw

Practise your situations — not generic examples

Describe a situation in your own words and SimLab builds a scenario from it. You can also upload an incident report or a procedure and get a scenario grounded in your own material.

The document is analysed in memory only and is never stored.

Who it's for

For those who work with people

Where employees face situations that can escalate every day, confident communication is a core skill.

Health and care services
Mental health and substance use
Schools and childhood services
Welfare and citizen services
Child welfare services
Customer service and public-facing roles
Correctional services
Managers and HR
Higher education

Benefits

For employees and for the organisation

For employees

Practise relevant situations safely, at your own pace — in the browser on your phone or computer. No colleagues watching, and your manager never sees your conversation.

For organisations

Systematic maintenance of communication skills that is not vulnerable to shift patterns, geography or instructor availability — and documentation that the practice actually happens.

Book a demo

Features

Everything you need to build the skill

A complete tool for training, following up and improving demanding human encounters across the whole organisation.

Voice-based simulation

Employees speak with AI characters that respond with realistic reactions and emotional expression, and that answer what is actually being said.

Structured, actionable feedback

Everyone meets the same core challenges and is assessed against the same criteria — listening, clarity, acknowledgment, pacing and de-escalating communication — even though the conversation develops differently. The focus is what worked and what to try next time.

Three training modes

Training with coaching along the way, testing without help, and “Watch and learn”, where employees follow an ideal conversation step by step.

Scenario library

Ready-made, curated scenarios to start with — and full freedom to build your own scenarios for your reality.

Requirements and certification

Set requirements, assign scenarios to teams, and let employees earn certifications they can share and have verified.

Works on a phone

Sessions are built for mobile: hands-free conversation by default, full screen, no installation. Training can happen wherever and whenever it fits.

For managers and HR

Visibility — from rollout to follow-up

SimLab gives managers the tools to roll out training across the organisation and follow progress over time — not just run a course.

Aggregated overview of activity and development across the organisation
Strong and weak skill areas for the organisation as a whole
Certifications you can require or recommend
Roles and permissions — owner, administrator and member
Invite employees by email and get started in minutes

Managers never see the transcript of an employee's conversation — no endpoint exists for it. Individual results are hidden by default, and in pilot mode they cannot be enabled at all.

Organisation overview

This month

Active

8.1

Average

92%

Completed

Acknowledgment8.4

Active listening6.8

Calm and presence8.1

De-escalating communication7.3

From knowledge to practice

KomLab builds the foundation. SimLab provides the practice.

KomLab provides shared understanding, language and tools for preventing and handling demanding situations. SimLab makes it possible to put that competence into practice through realistic training. Together they strengthen the move from training to confident practice.

Understand
Shared language and knowledge.
Practise
Realistic scenarios and repetition.
Develop
Reflection and local learning.

SimLab is an independent platform and can be used without KomLab.Read more about KomLab

Privacy

Built for the public sector from the first line of code

Privacy is not a page in our footer. It is a precondition for employees daring to practise at all.

We never store audio

Only the text transcript of the conversation is stored. There are no audio files to request access to, because they are never created.

We never analyse your voice

Inferring emotion from voice is biometric processing, prohibited in the workplace under Article 5 of the EU AI Act. Tone is derived from text, and the feature is opt-in.

Training data stored in the EEA

Transcripts, feedback and training history are stored in Germany. Our authentication provider and AI providers are US-based, and transfers rely on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. The full subprocessor list is published.

Your manager does not see your conversations

No administrator can read an employee's transcript. Individual results are hidden by default, and in pilot mode they are locked off.

You own your own data

Download a complete copy of everything we hold about you, or delete your account permanently — both self-service.

Data processing agreement

The data processing agreement, subprocessor list and accessibility statement are collected on one page.

Privacy and security

The team behind it

Developed on a solid professional foundation

SimLab is built on the models and training material of the KomLab training programme, developed by Thomas Haugen Nag.

www.komlab.info

Thomas Haugen Nag

Clinical nurse specialist and MSc in mental health care

Has nearly 20 years of experience from mental health services and has worked specifically on preventing and handling aggression and violence since 2009. His background spans clinical work, teaching, professional development and national development projects, and he has been a university college lecturer and led simulation training for students over several years.

Thomas has also published research and professional articles on de-escalation, communication skills and simulation training, among other subjects.

Professional foundation

SimLab's scenarios and feedback are built on KomLab's professional models and on a broad, up-to-date evidence base for de-escalating communication — including NICE NG10 (2015) and Project BETA (Richmond et al., 2012).

The aim is to turn professional knowledge into practical skills through realistic, repeatable training.

MAP is owned by the four Norwegian regional health authorities. SimLab is not affiliated with or endorsed by the MAP programme.

Evidence

What we know — and what we do not know yet

What is well documented

Simulation-based learning with repetition, clear objectives and feedback has solid support in the research. The largest meta-analysis in the field found large effects on knowledge, skills and behaviour (Cook et al., JAMA 2011, over 600 studies).

What is newer and less settled

AI-based conversation training is a younger field. A 2025 multicentre study (n=396) found that students improved their self-reported skills with both AI and actors — the actors produced somewhat greater improvement and higher satisfaction, while the AI option cost roughly half as much and can be run far more often.

What we do not claim

SimLab is not fully documented. We do not present it as if it were. We test it systematically together with professional communities, and we share the findings — including the unflattering ones.

Sources: Issenberg et al., Medical Teacher 2005 · Cook et al., JAMA 2011;306:978–988 · McGaghie et al., Academic Medicine 2011 · Stamer et al., JMIR 2023;25:e43311 · Fernández-Alcántara et al., JMIR Medical Education 2025;11:e63082 · Tyrrell et al., JMIR Formative Research 2025;9:e71667

Get started

Start with a pilot for one department

We do not sell a subscription whose value you have to guess at. We set up a bounded pilot, develop the scenarios together with you, and review it jointly before you decide anything further.

01
Introductory meeting
45–60 minutes. We show you the simulator, you tell us what you need to practise.
02
Needs analysis and scenarios
We develop three to five scenarios together, grounded in your roles and risk situations.
03
Trial period
A defined group uses SimLab for an agreed period, with technical support along the way.
04
Joint review
Experiences, needed improvements and a recommendation on further use — or on stopping.

What does it cost?

A quote tailored to headcount and usage. A departmental pilot is normally the scope we recommend starting with, and it is deliberately kept small.

No tender process needed

From 1 July 2026 the lower threshold in the Norwegian procurement rules is raised to NOK 500,000 excl. VAT. A pilot for a single department sits well below it and can therefore be started directly.

Higher education: free pilot partnership

Universities and colleges can become pilot partners at no cost. You get access and real influence over scenarios and pedagogical model; we get systematic feedback from a qualified professional community.

Book a demoWe normally reply within one working day.

Questions and answers

Frequently asked questions

Do you store audio recordings of the conversations?: No. We never store audio — only the text transcript of the conversation, which the feedback is based on. Voice biometrics are never stored.
How long is data stored, and who has access?: Transcripts and feedback are stored for as long as the account is active, and are permanently deleted when the account is deleted. Employees can download everything or delete their account themselves at any time. Managers see aggregated figures, never transcripts.
Can SimLab be used to monitor or assess employees?: No — and in pilot mode it is technically locked off. Individual results are not shared with the employer, and the feedback is the employee's own basis for learning.
Does SimLab replace courses, role-play and simulation?: No. SimLab is a supplement. Organised exercises produce excellent learning, but they need rooms, equipment and several people present. SimLab is the training in between.
Can we create our own scenarios?: Yes. Describe a situation in your own words, or upload an incident report or procedure, and the scenario is built from it. The document is analysed in memory only and is never stored.
What equipment is needed?: Just a browser and a microphone. SimLab runs in the browser on a phone or computer — no VR headsets, no installation. Headphones are recommended.
Which languages are supported?: The conversation itself and the feedback can be conducted in Norwegian, English, Swedish and Danish. The interface is available in Norwegian and English.
How do we get started?: Book a demo. We show you the simulator in 15 minutes and propose a pilot that fits. There is no self-service sign-up — we set the organisation up together with you.