VIRTUAL EXPERIENCES RESEARCH GROUP

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VIRTUAL PATIENTS

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Overview
One of the ways medical schools teach patient-doctor communication skills is through interaction with standardized patients, actors trained to represent a medical condition. Unfortunately, standardized patients are a limited resource. The variety of the scenarios they can represent is limited by availability and the time and money needed to train them. It is also difficult to ensure that standardized patients interact with all students consistently. To address these issues, we are exploring using virtual characters to help educate patient-doctor communication skills. Our current system allows medical students to interview DIANA, a virtual patient. Students interact with DIANA naturally using speech and gestures. A virtual instructor, VIC, provides immediate feedback on the student’s performance.

Approach
Our system uses data projectors to present life-sized virtual characters to the medical student. The student speaks to DIANA using a microphone. Speech is processed and matched to appropriate responses created by teaching faculty at the University of Florida, Shands Hospitals. A vision-based tracking system provides information about a user’s head and hand position in real-time. Hand tracking allows the user to interact with the virtual characters using natural gestures such as pointing and hand shaking. Head tracking allows rendering of the virtual character from the perspective of the user, as well as approximate measurement of head and gaze behavior.

Team Members

University of Florida, College of Engineering
Benjamin Lok, Ph.D.
Kyle Johnsen, Graduate Student
Andrew Raij, Graduate Student
Brent Rossen, Graduate Student
Rebecca Wells, Graduate Student
Robert Dickerson, Undergraduate

University of Florida, College of Medicine
Amy Stevens, M.D.
Marc Cohen, M.D.
Margaret Duerson, Ph.D.
Rebecca Pauly, M.D.

University of Florida, College of Education
Richard Ferdig, Ph.D.

Medical College of Georgia
D. Scott Lind, M.D.
Peggy Wagner, Ph.D.
Thomas Bernard, Medical Student
Chris Oxendine, Medical Student

Papers:

Journals:

Stevens, A., Hernandez, J., Johnsen, K., Dickerson, R., Raij, A., Harrison, C., Dipeitro, M., Allen, B., Ferdig, R., Foti, S., Jackson, J.,Shin, M. Cendan, J., Watson, R., Duerson, M. Lok, B., Cohen, M., Lind, D.S. The use of virtual patients to teach medical students history taking and communication skills. American Journal of Surgery 2006, Jun;191(6):806-11.

The Role of Virtual Patients in Medical Education: Teaching Tool Versus Technological Trend. D. Scott Lind, Medical College of Georgia, Benjamin Lok, Ph.D , University of Florida (2006) Focus on Surgical Education 2006. 23(1).

Bernard T, Stevens A, Wagner P, Bernard N, Schumacher L, Johnsen K, Dickerson R, Raij A, Lok B, Duerson M, Cohen M, Lind DS (2006), A Multi-Institutional Pilot Study to Evaluate the Use of Virtual Patients to Teach Health Professions Students History-Taking and Communication Skills. In Proceedings of the Society of Medical Simulation Meeting, January 2006.

Johnsen, Kyle, Robert Dickerson, Andrew Raij, Benjamin Lok, Jonathan Jackson, Min Shin, Jonathan Hernandez, Amy Stevens, Scott Lind (2005); Evolving an Immersive Medical Communication Skills Trainer; To appear in Journal on Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

Conference Proceedings:

Johnsen, Kyle, Andrew Raij, Benjamin Lok, Amy Stevens, D. Scott Lind (2007). “The Validity of a Virtual Human Experience for Interpersonal Skills Education” To Appear in Proceedings of ACM SIGCHI 2007.

Raij, Andrew, Kyle Johnsen, Robert Dickerson, Benjamin Lok, Marc Cohen, Amy Stevens, Thomas Bernard, Christopher Oxendine, Peggy Wagner, D. Scott Lind (2005). “Interpersonal Scenarios: Virtual ≈ Real?” In Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality 2006, 59-66.

Johnsen, Kyle, Robert Dickerson, Andrew Raij, Benjamin Lok, Jonathan Jackson, Min Shin, Jonathan Hernandez, Amy Stevens, Scott Lind (2005). “Experiences in Using Immersive Virtual Characters to Educate Medical Communication Skills,” In Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality 2005.

Dickerson, Robert, Kyle Johnsen, Andrew Raij, Benjamin Lok, Thomas Bernard, Amy Stevens, D. Scott Lind (2005). "Virtual Patients: Assessment of Synthesized Versus Recorded Speech," In Proceedings of Medicine Meets Virtual Reality 14, 114-119

Dickerson, Robert, Kyle Johnsen, Andrew Raij, Benjamin Lok, Jonathan Hernandez, Amy Stevens, and D. Scott Lind (2005). “Evaluating a Script-Based Approach to Simulating Patient-Doctor Interaction,” Proceedings of SCS 2005 International Conference on Human-Computer Interface Advances for Modeling and Simulating (SIMCHI ’05), 79-84.

Stevens, Amy, Jonathan Hernandez, Kyle Johnsen, Robert Dickerson, Andrew Raij, Jonathan Jackson, Min Shin, Juan Cendan, Margaret Duerson, Benjamin Lok, D. Scott Lind (2005). “The Use of Virtual Patients to Teach Medical Students Communication Skills,” Proceedings of the Association of Surgical Education 2005 .

Stevens, Amy, Jonathan Hernandez, Kyle Johnsen, Robert Dickerson, Andrew Raij, Jonathan Jackson, Min Shin, Juan Cendan, Margaret Duerson, Benjamin Lok, D. Scott Lind (2005). “The Use of Virtual Patients to Teach Medical Students Communication Skills,” Southern Group on Education Affairs 2005 .

Presentations:

Do Health Professions Students Respond Empathetically to a Virtual Patient? Cohen, M., Stevens, A., Wagner, P., Lok, B., Bernard, T., Oxendine, C. Schumacher, L., Kjohnsen, K., Dickerson, R., Raij, A., Ross, R. Duerson, M., Parimala, J., and D.S. Lind. 2006. in Southern Group on Education Affairs 2006

Implementing a Virtual Patient (VP) into the Medical School Curriculum at the University of Florida (UF) Amy O’Meara Stevens, Marc Cohen, Kyle Johnsen, Robert Dickerson, Andrew Raij, Rebecca Wells, Chris Oxendine, Peggy Wagner, Thomas Bernard, Juan C Cendan, Margaret Duerson, Rebecca Pauly, Benjamin Lok, D.Scott Lind in Southern Group on Education Affairs 2006

Last Update: November 15, 2007