Virtual Patient

Keele University’s School of Pharmacy has developed the Virtual Patient, which it claims will help medical students gain experience in effective communication and decision making.

Students interact with the Virtual Patient via voice recognition technology or by typing questions. The patient then responds, both verbally and non-verbally using a range of gestures, and later gives feedback to the trainee about their performance.

According to Keele University, the Virtual Patient can be used to explore a variety of conditions, including dyspepsia and hypertension. Factors such as ethnicity, age and gender can also be programmed in to demonstrate how these are significant to treatment.

Prof Stephen Chapman, head of Keele’s School of Pharmacy, said: ‘Training students to carry out one-to-one interviews is very resource intensive as you need to get people to role play the part of a patient or doctor. It is also difficult to standardise the process so that the students all get the same experience.