Background Virtual patients are interactive digital simulations of clinical scenarios for the purpose of health professions education. There is no current collated evidence on the effectiveness of this form of education. Objective The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of virtual patients compared with traditional education, blended with traditional education, compared with other types of digital education, and design variants of virtual patients in health professions education. The outcomes of interest were knowledge, skills, attitudes, and satisfaction. Methods We performed a systematic review on the effectiveness of virtual patient simulations in pre- and postregistration health professions education following Cochrane methodology. We searched 7 databases from the year 1990 up to September 2018. No language restrictions were applied. We included randomized controlled trials and cluster randomized trials. We independently selected studies, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias and then compared the information in pairs. We contacted study authors for additional information if necessary. All pooled analyses were based on random-effects models. Results A total of 51 trials involving 4696 participants met our inclusion criteria. Furthermore, 25 studies compared virtual patients with traditional education, 11 studies investigated virtual patients as blended learning, 5 studies compared virtual patients with different forms of digital education, and 10 studies compared different design variants. The pooled analysis of studies comparing the effect of virtual patients to traditional education showed similar results for knowledge (standardized mean difference [SMD]=0.11, 95% CI −0.17 to 0.39, I 2 =74%, n=927) and favored virtual patients for skills (SMD=0.90, 95% CI 0.49 to 1.32, I 2 =88%, n=897). Studies measuring attitudes and satisfaction predominantly used surveys with item-by-item comparison. Trials comparing virtual patients with different forms of digital education and design variants were not numerous enough to give clear recommendations. Several methodological limitations in the included studies and heterogeneity contributed to a generally low quality of evidence. Conclusions Low to modest and mixed evidence suggests that when compared with traditional education, virtual patients can more effectively improve skills, and at least as effectively improve knowledge. The skills that improved were clinical reasoning, procedural skills, and a mix of procedural and team skills. We found evidence of effectiveness in both high-income and low- and middle-income countries, demonstrating the global applicability of virtual patients. Further research should explore the utility of different design variants of virtual patients.

Despite the emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and the field of MOOC research, we have a limited understanding of the specific needs of different learner groups and how MOOCs can successfully address those needs. Video lectures and demonstrations are a central learning component of MOOCs. This paper contributes to the research community by examining the use of MOOC videos for two groups of learners. In particular, we explore whether there is an observable difference between specialists' and non-specialists' video-watching activity. We analyse data collected from three MOOCs on the edX platform. Our findings indicate that while age and educational background impacts the level of video activity, there is no significant difference between specialists and non-specialists. We conclude that the MOOC format may be suited to non-specialist groups, allowing them to self-direct their learning and utilise videos as educational resources.

ObjectiveThe purpose of this article is to explore learners’ perceptions of using virtual patients in a behavioral medicine Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) and thereby describe innovative ways of disseminating knowledge in health-related areas.MethodsA 5-week MOOC on behavioral medicine was hosted on the edX platform. The authors developed two branched virtual patients consisting of video recordings of a live standardized patient, with multiple clinical decision points and narration unfolding depending on learners’ choices. Students interacted with the virtual patients to treat stress and sleep problems. Answers to the exit survey and participant comments from the discussion forum were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.ResultsIn total, 19,236 participants enrolled in the MOOC, out of which 740 received the final certificate. The virtual patients were completed by 2317 and 1640 participants respectively. Among survey respondents (n = 442), 83.1% agreed that the virtual patient exercise was helpful. The qualitative analysis resulted in themes covering what it was like to work with the virtual patient, with subthemes on learner-centered education, emotions/eustress, game comparisons, what the participants learned, what surprised them, how confident participants felt about applying interventions in practice, suggestions for improvement, and previous experiences of virtual patients.ConclusionsStudents were enthusiastic about interacting with the virtual patients as a means to apply new knowledge about behavioral medicine interventions. The most common suggestion was to incorporate more interactive cases with various levels of complexity. Further research should include patient outcomes and focus on interprofessional aspects of learning with virtual patients in a MOOC.

Background. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are an emerging trend in online learning. However, their technology is not yet completely adjusted to the needs of healthcare education. Integration of Virtual Patients within MOOCs to increase interactivity and foster clinical reasoning skills training, has been discussed in the past, but not verified by a practical implementation.Objective. To investigate the technical feasibility of integrating MOOCs with Virtual Patients for the purpose of enabling further research into the potential pedagogical benefits of this approach.Methods. We selected OpenEdx and Open Labyrinth as representative constituents of a MOOC platform and Virtual Patient system integration. Based upon our prior experience we selected the most fundamental technical requirement to address. Grounded in the available literature we identified an e-learning standard to guide the integration. We attempted to demonstrate the feasibility of the integration by designing a “proof-of-concept” prototype. The resulting pilot implementation was subject of verification by two test cases.Results. A Single Sign-On mechanism connecting Open Labyrinth with OpenEdx and based on the IMS LTI standard was successfully implemented and verified.Conclusion. We investigated the technical perspective of integrating Virtual Patients with MOOCs. By addressing this crucial technical requirement we set a base for future research on the educational benefits of using virtual patients in MOOCs. This provides new opportunities for integrating specialized software in healthcare education at massive scale.

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This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows: The objective of this review is to evaluate the effectiveness of virtual patient simulation as an educational intervention versus traditional learning, other types of e-Learning interventions and other forms of virtual patient simulation interventions for delivering pre-registration and post-registration healthcare professional education. We will primarily assess the impact of these interventions on learners knowledge, skills and attitudes. Our secondary objective is to assess the cost-effectiveness of these interventions.

Funding Agencies|Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; NTU Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Singapore; Health Services and Outcomes Research (HSOR) National Healthcare Group, Singapore; Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, UK; National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under the Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) programme for North West London

BackgroundMassive open online courses (MOOCs) have been criticized for focusing on presentation of short video clip lectures and asking theoretical multiple-choice questions. A potential way of vitalizing these educational activities in the health sciences is to introduce virtual patients. Experiences from such extensions in MOOCs have not previously been reported in the literature.ObjectiveThis study analyzes technical challenges and solutions for offering virtual patients in health-related MOOCs and describes patterns of virtual patient use in one such course. Our aims are to reduce the technical uncertainty related to these extensions, point to aspects that could be optimized for a better learner experience, and raise prospective research questions by describing indicators of virtual patient use on a massive scale.MethodsThe Behavioral Medicine MOOC was offered by Karolinska Institutet, a medical university, on the EdX platform in the autumn of 2014. Course content was enhanced by two virtual patient scenarios presented in the OpenLabyrinth system and hosted on the VPH-Share cloud infrastructure. We analyzed web server and session logs and a participant satisfaction survey. Navigation pathways were summarized using a visual analytics tool developed for the purpose of this study.ResultsThe number of course enrollments reached 19,236. At the official closing date, 2317 participants (12.1% of total enrollment) had declared completing the first virtual patient assignment and 1640 (8.5%) participants confirmed completion of the second virtual patient assignment. Peak activity involved 359 user sessions per day. The OpenLabyrinth system, deployed on four virtual servers, coped well with the workload. Participant survey respondents (n=479) regarded the activity as a helpful exercise in the course (83.1%). Technical challenges reported involved poor or restricted access to videos in certain areas of the world and occasional problems with lost sessions. The visual analyses of user pathways display the parts of virtual patient scenarios that elicited less interest and may have been perceived as nonchallenging options. Analyzing the user navigation pathways allowed us to detect indications of both surface and deep approaches to the content material among the MOOC participants.ConclusionsThis study reported on first inclusion of virtual patients in a MOOC. It adds to the body of knowledge by demonstrating how a biomedical cloud provider service can ensure technical capacity and flexible design of a virtual patient platform on a massive scale. The study also presents a new way of analyzing the use of branched virtual patients by visualization of user navigation pathways. Suggestions are offered on improvements to the design of virtual patients in MOOCs.

Patients’ medical histories are the salient dataset for diagnosis. Prior work shows consistently, however, that medical history-taking by physicians generally is incomplete and not accurate. Such findings suggest that methods to improve the completeness and accuracy of medical history data could have clinical value. We address this issue with expert system software to enable automated history-taking by computers interacting directly with patients, i.e. computerized history-taking (CHT). Here we compare the completeness and accuracy of medical history data collected and recorded by physicians in electronic health records (EHR) with data collected by CHT for patients presenting to an emergency room with acute chest pain. Physician history-taking and CHT occurred at the same ED visit for all patients. CHT almost always preceded examination by a physician. Data fields analyzed were relevant to the differential diagnosis of chest pain and comprised information obtainable only by interviewing patients. Measures of data quality were completeness and consistency of negative and positive findings in EHR as compared with CHT datasets. Data significant for the differential of chest pain was missing randomly in all EHRs across all data items analyzed so that the dimensionality of EHR data was limited. CHT files were near complete for all data elements reviewed. Separate from the incompleteness of EHR data, there were frequent factual inconsistencies between EHR and CHT data across all data elements. EHR data did not contain representations of symptoms that were consistent with those reported by patients during CHT. Trial registration: This study is registered at https://www.clinicaltrials.gov (unique identifier: NCT03439449).