UF's Virtual Reality 'Patient' Teaches Bedside Manners to Medical Students
From: University of Florida News - 03/02/2005

Improving doctors' patient interview skills is the goal behind DIgital
ANimated Avatar (DIANA), a virtual patient devised by University of Florida
researchers as an educational tool medical students can use to practice
asking questions that lead to better diagnosis, as well as learn more subtle
ways of communicating, such as through eye contact and gestures. DIANA is a
life-sized image of a young Caucasian woman that is projected onto a wall
along with a simulated doctor's office. Users wear headsets to communicate
with the avatar, don LED pointer-equipped gloves so the system can track
gestures, and take notes with a digital notepad. The system responds to
keywords and phrases and is designed to participate in highly structured
conversations. Computer science professor Benjamin Lok, the project's lead
researcher, says doctors interacted with DIANA more naturally then they did
with regular computer programs during the testing phase. DIANA was tested by
seven medical students last August and by another 20 in December; by that
time, the avatar's average realism and usefulness rating was almost equal to
that of the live actors usually used to train students. Lok notes that though
the virtual patient can look up when addressed, look down during pauses in
conversation, and extend her arm to get a handshake, there are still other
communicative gestures - body language, hand gestures, etc. - that the system
is not yet equipped to handle. However, he says virtual patients will one day
permit students to participate in an almost infinite range of interview
models accounting for variances in medical conditions, race, gender, and age. 

http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2005news/vrpatient.htm

Links:
Benjamin Lok
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~lok/

UF's Virtual Reality 'Patient' Teaches Bedside Manners To Medical Students
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050310180037.htm

Virtual Reality and the Art of Medical Interview
http://www.primidi.com/2005/03/20.html