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Affective Virtual Patient

Emotional Patient Simulator for medical Education

Supervisor: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernhard Jung Participants: Abdul Ahad, Panayiotis Petropoulos, Matthias Weber, Alma Salim and Wendy Ann Mansillay In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Lucas Wessel & Frank Albrecht, Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein / Campus Lübeck, Klinik für Kinderchirurgie. Subjects: Social Interaction Training, Affective Interfaces, Virtual Agents

Training of social interaction skills, particularly for emotionally charged situations is becoming increasingly critical in many professions. In cases such as the medical field, however, conventional real-world or role-playing training is extremely limited or even impossible. An example for this is the treatment injured children.

Therefore, we have developed an e-learning system that uses virtual agent technology to simulate the treatment of and human interaction with a hurt, upset boy and his emotional, easily agitated mother. Inconsiderate behaviors such as asking for insurance cards at the wrong moment, inappropriate joking, or addressing certain questions at the wrong person may contribute to the deterioration of the situation, hinder procedural progress, and lead to complaints about the medical personnel. The PC-based system employs Haptek virtual character technology allowing for highly emotional facial expression and lip-synchronized speech.

Affective Virtual Patient has been positioned among the top 20 projects at Multimedia Transfer 2005 in Karlsruhe.

More information can be found at:

• Bernhard Jung, Abdul Ahad and Matthias Weber
  The Affective Virtual Patient: An E-Learning Tool for Social Interaction Training within the Medical Field
  Training Education & Education International Conference (TESI 2005),
  Mastrict, Netherlands, March 2005. Proceedings Nexus Media, March, 2005.