Virtual Integrated Patient: An AI supplementary tool for second-year medical students

Introduction: With the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore underwent a national lockdown in which most organisations, including schools were closed. Halting face-to-face tutorials resulting in decreased clinical contact for medical students. Prior to the pandemic, we had developed the Virtual Integrated Patient (VIP). Equipped with conversational technology, it provides students online practice in various clinical skills such as history-taking, physical examination and investigations. The aim of this paper is to describe the supplementary use of VIP in the second-year class, in which a pilot study was conducted. Methods: The VIP platform was introduced to the cohort and used to supplement the teaching of history-taking in the “Communication with Patients” (CWP) module for second-year students. Traditionally, CWP tutorials involve face-to-face history-taking from standardised patients (SPs). Students, who consented to participating in the trial, had an additional 3 weeks’ access to VIP to practice their history-taking skills. They completed a survey on their user experience and satisfaction at the end of the 3 weeks. Results: Out of the 106 participants, 87% strongly agreed or agreed that using VIP helped in remembering the content while 69% of them felt that VIP increased their confidence and competence in history-taking. Conclusion: VIP was well-received by students and showed promise as a tool to supplement history-taking tutorials, prior to students’ encounter with SPs and real patients. Hence, this trend showed its potential as an alternative when clinical rotations were delayed or cancelled. Further research can be done to evaluate its effectiveness in this context.