Virtual patient

• Main Author: Wong, Inge.
• Other Authors: Alexei Sourin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computer applications::Life and medical sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/48546
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Standardized Patients have been widely used in hospitals and medical schools to train students. The term “Standardized Patients” refers to the specially trained actors who portray patients with particular health conditions or concerns. They are able to give a consistent and pre-defined account of their condition and to answer the full spectrum of questions about themselves. This allows students or other learners to practice taking a medical history and carrying on a logical medical conversation with patients with a variety of diseases. By replacing human actors to chat bot, this project aims to design, create, and develop a system which can act and function like Standardized Patients. The system is called Virtual Patient. Research on similar projects, chat bots, and contents of diseases to add is done to better develop and make the Virtual Patient behaves more like a real human. The existing ALICE brain, Haptek Player, and AIML language are considered the best components to develop the Virtual Patient. With the Virtual Patient, users will be able to have a wide range of conversations, including the medical questions. Users will then be able to make a diagnosis and receive a feedback on the diagnosis and the user performance on the encounter. Moreover, users are also able to do additional tests, such as listen to patient’s breathing sound, perform x-ray test, and many more. This is possible by playing back a certain sound files and popping up a certain image as the test result. Once the Virtual Patient is developed, the implementation of a new condition will be easier to handle as compared to train a new Standardized Patient. It also has high potential to provide certain information which Standardized Patients may not be able to give, such as jaundice which caused by liver disease. Once the development reaches a certain extent, the Virtual Patient will be a highly potential replacement for Standardized Patients.