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Virtual Patients

Virtual patients are simulations or representations of individuals involved in one or more healthcare processes, typically but not necessarily, patients. The main uses for virtual patients are education, training and research. Virtual patients may take a number of different forms: Pediatric polysomnography patient Childrens Hospital (Saint Louis), 2006 A patient or invalid is any person who receives medical attention, care, or treatment. ... Training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relates to specific useful skills obtained thru time. ... Research is a human activity based on intellectual investigation and aimed at discovering, interpreting, and revising human knowledge on different aspects of the world. ...

• Artificial patients: computer simulations of biochemical processes such as the effect of drugs in organisms. These are typically used in pharmacological research as an alternative to testing on animals and humans for some of the drug development process.
• Real patients: reflected in data e.g. electronic health records (EHRs). In this case the virtual patient is the reflection of the real patient in terms of data held about them. These are sometimes called e-patients.
• Physical simulators: mannequins (sometimes spelled 'manikins'), models or related artefacts.
• Simulated patients: where the patient is recreated by humans or computer-generated characters acting as such or engaging in other kinds of role-play.
• Electronic case-studies and scenarios where users work through problems, situations or similar narrative-based activities.

Look up simulation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Biochemistry is the chemistry of life. ... Pharmacology (in Greek: pharmakos (φάρμακον) meaning drug, and logos (λόγος) meaning science) is the study of how substances interact with living organisms to produce a change in function. ... In medicine, a clinical trial (synonyms: clinical studies, research protocols, medical research) is a research study. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Pharmacology. ... Electronic health record (EHR) with image and document links. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... A wooden mannequin For other uses, see Mannequin (disambiguation). ... A simulated patient or standardized patient (SP), in health care, is an individual who is trained to act as a real patient in order to simulate a set of symptoms or problems. ... In role-playing, participants adopt characters, or parts, that have personalities, motivations, and backgrounds different from their own. ... Case studies involve a particular method of research. ... A scenario (from the Italian, that which is pinned to the scenery) is a brief description of an event or a series of events. ... Look up Problem in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

What Educational Issues do Virtual Patients Help to Address?

Clinical care is becoming faster and less invasive meaning that patients are spending less time in care. Widespread changes in employment legislation are leading to reduced working hours for doctors which in turn also reduce the capacity for bedside teaching. At the same time we need more and more doctors, nurses and allied health professionals, indeed not just more doctors but better and safer doctors too. Not only do virtual patients offer the promise of addressing the deficit in healthcare training opportunities but they help to move away from opportunistic training to more normalized patterns of student experience and study. From a more positive perspective virtual patients allow healthcare education to be conducted in valid and authentic settings, they help to contextualise medical science, skills, sociology and knowledge and they can support students' synthesis of these different aspects of their training. Unlike real patients virtual patients can be accessed on demand and they can be endlessly replayable (allowing the user to explore different options and strategies). Furthermore they can be significantly more immersive than other forms of study and they can be structured with narratives that represent real situations while challenging and engaging the user with a wide range of problems and tasks. A patient is the name given to any person who is ill or injured and is being treated by, or in need of treatment by, a physician or other medical professional. ... Nurses is a television sitcom that ran on NBC from 1991 to 1994. ... The Allied health professions are those clinical health professions distinct from the medical profession and nursing profession. ... Training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relates to specific useful skills obtained thru time. ... Health care or healthcare is one of the worlds largest and fastest growing professions. ... In psychology a conclusion is said to be valid, if and only if, it is based on true premises. ... See drugs, medication, and pharmacology for substances that are used to treat patients. ... Part of a scientific laboratory at the University of Cologne. ... Skill is human (usually learned) ability to perform actions. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Personification of knowledge (Greek Επιστημη, Episteme) in Celsus Library in Ephesos, Turkey. ... A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, most often winning. Strategy is differentiated from tactics or immediate actions with resources at hand. ... The term immersion refers to the impression that someone has of being somewhere while, in reality, he is physically in another place. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Problem refers to a situation, condition, or issue that is unresolved or undesired. ... In common language, a task is part of a set of actions which accomplish a job; the sense is that useful work is getting done. Task analysis is the analysis or a breakdown of exactly how a task is accomplished, such as what sub-tasks are required. ...

How are Virtual Patients used in Education?

• The role of the learner may take many forms, such as the physician, the patient, an external observer, the tutor for other students, or some other participant in the healthcare process or the patient's journey.
• The learner may be acting independently, under the guidance of a tutor or instructor, or in a collaborative setting with other learners.
• The virtual patient may be naturalistic (capturing the perhaps less than ideal nature of real patient care) or formalized (presenting an idealised or particularly structured learning experience).

A number of different modes of virtual patient delivery have been defined:

• Predetermined scenario [directed mode]
• The learner may build up the patient or case data from observations and interactions [blank mode]
• The learner may view and appraise or review an existing patient or scenario [critique mode or rehearsal mode]
• The VP may be used as a mechanism to address particular topics [context mode]
• The learner may use a scenario or patient to explore personal/professional dimensions [reflective mode]
• Banks of patients or scenarios may collectively address broad issues of healthcare [pattern mode]

What are the problems with using Virtual Patients in Education?

• Despite their efficacy virtual patients are still a tangent and a prosthesis to reality. They should be viewed as augmenting existing modes and methods of clinical teaching.
• The use of virtual patients can lead to over-standardised encounters if variation and user agency is low within them.
• Creating virtual patients is time consuming and difficult. For instance, authors need to develop skills in creating convincing and meaningful narratives.
• The sharing and exchange of virtual patients can be problematic for many technical, educational socio-cultural and individual reasons.

Virtual Patient Data Standards

The MedBiquitous consortium established a working group in 2005 to create a free and open data standard for expressing and exchanging virtual patients between different authoring and delivery systems. This was in part to address the problem of exchanging and resuing virtual patients and in part to encourage and support easier and wider use of virtual patients in general.

MedBiquitous Virtual Patient Working Group

Examples

Electronic Cases

WebSP from Karolinska Institutet

Virtual Patients from Harvard Medical School

Virtual Patient Project from New York University

Labyrinth from the University of Edinburgh

Simulators

Limbs and Things simulators

Entelos predictive biosimulators

SimMan simulator

Harvey simulator,

See Also

• CAVEman
• Homem Virtual
• InVesalius
• VIP Man