A Tool for Training Primary Health Care Medical Students: The Virtual Simulated Patient

In this paper we present an embodied conversational agent (ECA) that simulates a real human patient presenting several symptoms for training medical students in the field of primary health care. Students interview the ECA to diagnose his diseases as a doctor would do in a real situation. This virtual patient can communicate using natural language and express different moods that depend on the diseases he suffers from and the studentpsilas behavior. The ECApsilas behavior is done by means of the coordination of several modules devoted to different tasks: natural language understanding, dialogue management, emotional state control and natural language generation. An ontology that gathers the domain knowledge of the agent specifies a semantic language that the modules use to communicate themselves. The system has two kinds of advantages. First, it offers a way to put in practice the theoretical knowledge acquired by the students in their degree courses and to improve the diagnostic and communicative skills decreasing the learning curve of these abilities, setting them for an interview process like the one they are going to face in their real job. Second, the system is ready to use at any time without needing special or expensive equipment, only a standard PC.