HKU develops AI 'virtual patient' to enhance medical students' skills

Eunice Lam

The University of Hong Kong has developed the city's first artificial intelligence "virtual patient" to allow medical students to enhance their professional skills and ability to gather patients' medical history.

The idea of a virtual patient chatbot arose in 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic prevented students from participating in conventional bedside consultations in hospitals.

Jointly developed by HKU's medical school and the Department of Computer Science, the AI chatbot was launched in August this year.

By integrating generative AI technology, the AI chatbot allows teachers to design virtual patients with real-life surgical cases.

At the same time, students can chat with patients of different ages, personalities, and educational levels.

The chatbot is also available in multiple languages, including Cantonese.

After gathering patients' symptoms and medical histories, students have to conduct an analysis and present their findings to teachers.

The chatbot has been integrated into breast surgery courses for year four medical students since last month.

But the school emphasized the AI chatbot will not replace physical bedside consultation learning.

Michael Co Tiong-hong, clinical assistant professor of the department of surgery added that the AI chatbot will only account for five percent of clinical teaching.

"The AI chatbot, at the moment, lacks the training of [students'] bedside manner," Co said. "It couldn't replace the real human-to-human touch and interactions, which can never be replaced."

"We are designing this AI chatbot, not to replace the conventional bedside teaching, but it is an add-on or an addition to our conventional teaching method."

He added teachers can also design virtual patients with rarer and more complicated conditions, such as postoperative complications, that students may not encounter in clinical practice. Although the chatbot is limited to text-based responses for now, the school said it is working on adding AI-generated pictures and videos in the future, pointing out that costs and image accuracy are some of the challenges in launching such a function.

Assistant professor of the department of computer science John Yuen Tsz-hon said the chatbot has been used by over 100 medical students and the system's operation costs are about US$100 (about HK$781) a month.

Meanwhile, starting last month, HKU and the National University of Singapore have been holding a joint-universities virtual bedside teaching session, in which teachers from both universities design virtual patients of their own regions for a cross-over teaching and group discussion.

Co said by allowing other universities to design virtual patients, students can get to know about common diseases in other countries, and thus enhance their diagnosis skills.

The school expects more universities worldwide to adopt the AI chatbot in the future, adding that the University of Edinburgh in Scotland will join HKU and NUS in the next virtual bedside teaching session.

eunice.lam@singtaonewscorp.com