Effective communication skills are an integral part of the patient-doctor relationship, aiding in patient autonomy, trust, and comprehension. In medical school, students practice these skills with standardized patients (SPs): human actors trained to portray patients, simulating common scenarios that the students will encounter in their residencies and as doctors. Interactions with SPs are essential for the development of clinical competency skills in nursing, pharmaceutical, and medical students. However, students have limited opportunities to practice and develop these skills in a realistic environment during their education.

In these projects, we are working directly with a medical school in Ontario to design tools to augment the current SP program. First, we are developing an AI-driven virtual simulated patient system that students can interact with to improve their clinical communication skills. We are also developing an AI-assisted patient case co-creation tool to help case writers efficiently develop diverse patient cases and harness the full potential of the AI-driven SP system. Together, these tools will provide students with more cases to practice with and the ability to interact with a virtual SP anywhere, anytime.