Developing Virtual Patients with VR/AR for a natural user interface in medical teaching

Abstract

Professionalism and communication skills are important aspects of medical training, and virtual patient applications can offer cost effective, easily accessible platforms for communication practice which complement flexible, student-driven medical school curriculum design. Further, numerous virtual and augmented reality platforms have been introduced recently. This paper explores potential advantages and disadvantages Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) technologies offer to the development of a virtual patient application specifically for communication practice - the Emotive Virtual Patients - with a natural user interface. VR/AR technologies may offer highly interactive, immersive virtual patient experiences that tie to our research goals, improve presence and create a more fertile environment to practice empathy, however they may also present platform-specific challenges. A potential virtual patient design framework is discussed, and the unique benefits and limitations of VR/AR devices are analyzed. We put our research in the context of other virtual patient research, and hypothesize what benefits in terms of presence and natural user interfaces VR/AR may provide.