This paper draws on a range of empirical studies conducted to date into the uses of virtual haptic simulators (VHS) in higher education and training informed by well-established educational models of the impact of new technologies on pedagogies and integration into practice. The rapidly growing number of new technologies being produced in the health sciences and those already embedded into higher education courses provide new opportunities but also many challenges for educators, trainers and practitioners. The extensive research evidence to date has mostly been gathered in dental and medical education but the evidence from these studies provides a robust foundation and framework to identify what challenges and opportunities we currently face for digitally enhancing higher education (TEL) at the same time as identifying the limitations to transforming teaching and learning. Using Entwistle and Peterson’s framework of factors influencing students’ learning, this research evidence to-date, reveals several challenges identified here for the successful uptake and integration of VHS which include:- the need to engage all teaching staff in the innovation process; the frequent reluctance of educators to take up new technologies because of the anticipated changes and likeliness of obsoleteness; resistance to change in one’s teaching; insufficient time to learn new technologies and unwillingness to adopt innovations imposed from ‘above’ by their learning leaders.