Archive for the ‘School of Pharmacy’ tag
Virtual Patients take one for the team
IT Development Director Luke Bracegirdle demonstrates a virtual patient scenario.
After Ben’s post the other day about “the Doctor” from Star Trek Voyager it made me remember a news article I had read at ScienceDaily.com.
While in Star Trek Voyager a computer program was used to play the physician’s role, at Keele University in the UK they’ve developed “virtual patients” to train future pharmacists. These “virtual patients” are used to teach proper techniques in communicating and diagnosing patients. The overall program is called the Virtual Consultancy Program and focuses on providing digital avatar based training that rivals that of one on one interview training without the resource constraints of having faculty work one on one with every student.
The “virtual patients” behave quite believably throughout the example scenario displayed by the Keele University School of Pharmacy site. Most remarkably the program reacted quickly and realistically to questions spoken into a headset. The versatility and seeming ease of use makes this training tool particularly impressive.
What most impressed me most, was the potential that this “virtual patient” program illustrates. Keele University’s Virtual Consultancy Program ultimately uses computers to model certain human interactions in order to provide a learning tool for future pharamacists. Part of the parameters within the program include the patient’s basic physical statistics, symptoms, and even allergies in order to provide effective tests and examples for students. It seems to me that this software if developed properly could eventually be very useful in creating models with which doctors can practice and explore diagnosing difficult diseases/conditions.
It would be amazing to be able to model effects of various diseases within a “virtual patient” to determine the potential outcomes for a real patient. Risks could then be accurately assessed providing doctors with another method for screening potential therapies in various situations as well as potentially developing new diagnostic procedures. While I’m sure a lot of work would need to be done to produce a “virtual patient” of that sophistication not only with regards to software, but medical understanding as well. It’s nice to think about the possibilities.