In Medical teacher
INTRODUCTION : Advances in natural language understanding have facilitated the development of Virtual Standardized Patients (VSPs) that may soon rival human patients in conversational ability. We describe herein the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) system for VSPs enabling students to practice their history taking skills.
METHODS : Our system consists of (1) Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), (2) hybrid AI for question identification, (3) classifier to choose between the two systems, and (4) automated speech generation. We analyzed the accuracy of the ASR, the two AI systems, the classifier, and student feedback with 620 first year medical students from 2018 to 2021.
RESULTS : System accuracy improved from ∼75% in 2018 to ∼90% in 2021 as refinements in algorithms and additional training data were utilized. Student feedback was positive, and most students felt that practicing with the VSPs was a worthwhile experience.
CONCLUSION : We have developed a novel hybrid dialogue system that enables artificially intelligent VSPs to correctly answer student questions at levels comparable with human SPs. This system allows trainees to practice and refine their history-taking skills before interacting with human patients.
Maicher Kellen R, Stiff Adam, Scholl Marisa, White Michael, Fosler-Lussier Eric, Schuler William, Serai Prashant, Sunder Vishal, Forrestal Hannah, Mendella Lexi, Adib Mahsa, Bratton Camille, Lee Kevin, Danforth Douglas R
2022-Nov-08
Communication skills, simulation, standardized patients
