SBIR Phase II: Serious Gaming Platform for Mastering the Physician-Patient Diagnostic Interview

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will complete development of the Artificial Intelligent (AI) Patient platform. This immersive simulation platform helps medical students hone their listening and rapport-building skills by interacting with ?virtual? patients. The student asks questions and the video clip response from the patient depends on the specific question asked, how that question is asked, and when it is asked in the interview. If the student asks the wrong question, or asks inappropriate questions, then the patient will respond in a way that will prevent a positive doctor-patient relationship from developing. Because it combines video clips and artificial intelligence and is web-based, we anticipate that this training platform will teach a medical school student (and other health professionals) how to really pay attention to their patients, and that it will do so more effectively than other training products already on the market. In Phase II, we will complete the platform build, incorporate additional artificial intelligence and speech recognition capabilities, create versions of the platform that will work on smart phones and tablets, and develop a set of six patient scenarios. This work will result in a platform that closely approximates a natural conversational experience. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be to achieve a significant advancement over currently available computer-based training and other instructional tools. Medical schools are experiencing a transition from passive to active methods of teaching, as professors and students both have the desire to replace passive learning methods of PowerPoint slides, lectures, and instructional videos with more interactive methods of learning. The active experience provided by the AI Patient platform will help students learn to be more effective listeners and better health practitioners, which will result in better patient outcomes. The platform will also allow researchers to track and measure the effectiveness of using this kind of training tool. By working with our medical school teaming partners (West Virginia University School of Medicine and the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine), we will develop a set of scenarios that we can license to other medical schools. Sales to the medical school community will support the development of more medical scenarios and enable us to expand into other sectors?such as law enforcement, HR training, and social work?where trust and rapport-building skills are critical.