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.

  • No audio recordings, ever
  • Training data stored in the EEA
  • Ready to use in minutes
Screenshot of the SimLab app on a phone: the AI character Mai Tran in a training session about a wrongly billed subscription

A real session from the app – the character speaks, listens and reacts to what you say

MT

Mai Tran

Wrongly billed subscription · Customer service

In progress
TemperatureCalm
  • Mai: I've now called twice about exactly this, and you're still charging me! I cancelled the subscription in March.
  • You: I understand you're frustrated. You cancelled, you've called twice, and you're still being charged – that shouldn't happen.
  • Mai: I just want it to stop. And to get my money back.
  • You: Absolutely fair. I'm stopping the charge now and setting up a refund for March and April. Would you like a confirmation by email?
  • Mai: Yes … thank you. That helps.

Say “help” at any time to get coaching

Feedback · Session completed

Strong effort
Acknowledgment8.5
Active listening7.5
Self-regulation8.0
Creating safety7.5

Safety · Learning · Mastery

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.

01

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.

02

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.

Empty training room with a circle of chairs in morning light
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.

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.

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.

  1. 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?

  2. 02

    Practise

    Speak with an AI character that responds dynamically to what is said, and to how the conversation develops.

  3. 03

    Review

    Go through the conversation turn by turn, with suggested alternative phrasings at the moments that mattered.

  4. 04

    Reflect

    What happened inside me? What helped me stay balanced? Your own assessment sits alongside the structured feedback.

  5. 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.

  • Family member seen from behind in a hospital waiting room
    A relative who disagrees with the care plan
  • A patient frustrated by waiting time
  • Someone resisting what has to be done
  • Student seen from behind at a desk in a classroom
    A student escalating in frustration
  • A difficult conversation after an incident
  • An employee who has to receive difficult news
  • Citizen seen from behind at the counter of a public office
    A citizen reacting strongly to a decision
  • 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.

  • Nurse seen from behind in a hospital corridorHealth and care services
  • Two chairs facing each other by a window in a consultation roomMental health and substance use
  • Teacher seen from behind in a school corridor with lockersSchools and childhood services
  • Caseworker seen from behind at a desk in an open-plan officeWelfare and citizen services
  • Adult seen from behind on the floor of a family room with toysChild welfare services
  • Person wearing a headset seen from behind in front of a screenCustomer service and public-facing roles
  • Uniformed officer seen from behind in a long corridorCorrectional services
  • Manager seen from behind at a whiteboard in a meeting roomManagers and HR
  • Students seen from behind in a lecture hallHigher 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.

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 answer what is actually being said. The character carries an emotional register — anger, despair, anxiety, grief or withdrawal — and only settles when it is genuinely met. It never flips from furious to cheerful, and it is easily re-ignited if you move too fast.

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.

Structured, actionable feedback

Everyone is assessed against the same seven KomLab criteria — active listening, acknowledgment, self-regulation, safety, trust, finding solutions together and setting limits — even though the conversation develops differently. Every point in the feedback names a concrete moment in the conversation, quoted in your own words, and gives one sentence you could have said instead. 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.

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

24

Active

8.1

Average

92%

Completed

Acknowledgment8.4
Active listening6.8
Self-regulation8.1
Creating safety7.3

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.

  1. Understand

    Shared language and knowledge.

  2. Practise

    Realistic scenarios and repetition.

  3. 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. Sign-in is processed in the US. In the EEA setup, speech and the language model are processed in the EU. The full subprocessor list, with the basis for each transfer, 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

Portrait of Thomas Haugen Nag

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.

What SimLab assesses — and what we deliberately leave out

SimLab trains and assesses the part of KomLab that happens in words: staying steady when it gets uncomfortable, listening, acknowledging and exploring before explaining, finding a way forward together with the person once they are ready, setting limits clearly and respectfully, and taking your own safety seriously. The assessment rests on the transcript of what was said and the timing between turns — never on your voice, and never on guesses about what you felt.

Body language and positioning, teamwork, physical protective techniques and the follow-up work in a real service do not exist in a transcript, and we do not let the system guess. Those are covered by the KomLab course, role-play with colleagues and supervision in your own workplace. SimLab covers the conversation — as often as you need to practise it.

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.

  1. 01

    Introductory meeting

    45–60 minutes. We show you the simulator, you tell us what you need to practise.

  2. 02

    Needs analysis and scenarios

    We develop three to five scenarios together, grounded in your roles and risk situations.

  3. 03

    Trial period

    A defined group uses SimLab for an agreed period, with technical support along the way.

  4. 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 assess body language and voice?
No. SimLab assesses only the words — what you said, when you said it and what you left unsaid — from the transcript of the conversation. Body language, positioning and teamwork are an important part of KomLab, but they do not exist in a transcript, and we do not let the system guess. Your voice is never analysed; that is prohibited in the workplace under the AI Act, and we would not do it anyway.
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.
Person seen from behind at a tall window at dusk, city lights outside

Practise before it counts

Book a demo and we will show you the simulator and propose a pilot that fits.

We normally reply within one working day.