What is the VIP?

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The Virtual Integrated Patient (VIP) is an online web-based platform that was created In the National University of Singapore, YLL School of Medicine for the explicit purpose of supplementing clinical skills training. The intent was to make up for the decreasing access in many medical schools to real patients for student practice. This deficiency has been developing for many years, but has been aggravated recently by the restrictions imposed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The VIP is entirely cloud-based and does not require any installation or additional hardware.

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What is the VIP able to do?

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Generation of unique virtual patients.

The VIP randomly autogenerates a limitless variety of patients according to various demographic factors, e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, occupation, address, marital status etc . Even within a specific symptom-diagnosis set there will be a variety of patients so that the student/user will never get allocated the same patient, unless he/she specifically recalls a particular patient for review.

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Wide variety of patients

Our database of symptom-diagnosis sets are increasing all the time. As on Jan 2021, we have a library of 9 symptoms and 29 diagnoses.

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Conversational interface

The VIP platform was built to allow true conversational engagement with the virtual patient. This sets the VIP apart from the vast majority of virtual patient platforms in the marketplace, that generally makes use of action boxes, drop-down menus, and text chunked patient responses. We firmly believe a conversational interface best simulates real life doctor-patient engagement, and encourages the student/user to be explicit and specific about requesting for information from the virtual patient. The present conversational interface is a text-based chatbot, but we are planning for speech recognition and voice output.

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Symptom-to-diagnosis approach

The VIP platform allows student/user to approach every new patient from the initial contact and identity confirmation, through interview about presenting symptomatology, other relevant (or irrelevant) parts of the history, physical examination, lab and imaging investigations to diagnoses and medical intervention. The progression simulates a real encounter with the patient. 

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The VIP does not constrain the student with respect to what information is relevant or critical. Instead it allows the student to explore in a natural way and to make his/her choices about the direction the engagement takes, the investigations as well as the final decisions about the diagnosis. We believe this exploration - discovery (with no real cost/injury to the patient) is a vital part of the student's learning journey.

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Performance tracking

A limited performance tracking is available with the basic platform. More complex and specific performance tracking process, can be customized according to more domain-specific pedagogic needs. Please contact us if this is required.

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Is the VIP being used by any school at the moment?

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Yes, the VIP is currently being used in the NUS YLL School of Medicine and Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, as well as the International Medical University, Malaysia.

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How do I access the VIP?

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The VIP is available according to a school-based, or individual license. Please check out the Registration/Log-In page.

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Who created the VIP?

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You can check out the people involved here.

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Intellectual Property?

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The license for VIP is held by the National University of Singapore. The product is distributed by the start-up company AICanChat Pte Ltd.

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Are you open to research collaborations?

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We certainly are! Please check in here.

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