Virtual patients: a year of change.

2010 was a vintage year for virtual patients (VPs) with an almost continuous sequence of publications and presentations at the major conferences. Notable examples include AMEE and its subsidiary e-Learning Symposium, the 2nd International Conference on VPs, and a large number of keynote presentations in national and international e-Learning and educational conferences. The increase in international collaboration, coupled to a reduction in VP creation costs and simpler creation tools, has all contributed to this sharp increase in interest. VPs have finally become embedded in the curriculum: in problem-based learning; as core components of lectures, tutorials and seminars; as assessment tools. The medical education community can increasingly turn its attention to the ways in which VPs can be used with the greatest efficiency and pedagogic value. Meanwhile, where will technology next take the VP? It is now possible to consider the extension of the current, relatively lightweight, VP into a truly interactive patient simulation, moving towards the concept of an 'e-human' or 'digital avatar'. At that stage, the simulation may take on new capabilities, offering authentic patient management, clinical and communication skills training, and the potential capability to mimic the health or disease of any citizen.

The role of intellectual property in creating, sharing and repurposing virtual patients.

Medical schools are integrating more technology into the training of health care practitioners. Electronic Virtual Patients (VPs) provide interactive simulations to facilitate learning. The time, cost and effort required to create robust VPs on an individual school basis are significant; sharing of VPs by medical schools allows for access to a broad range of VPs across a variety of disciplines with lower investment. When this digital content is shared with other schools and distributed widely, digital copyright issues come into play. Unless all intellectual property rights (IPRs) and plans of the authors regarding the VP are confirmed upfront, the ability of the school to share the VP may be inhibited. Schools should also identify under what licensing/sharing model they plan to distribute the VPs - how do you plan to share the VPs and what will allow users to do with the VPs in the context of IPRs? This article highlights the role of IPRs in VPs and discusses a case-study of a European Virtual Patient collaboration to demonstrate how IPRs were managed.

eViP: sharing virtual patients across Europe.

Virtual Patients are interactive computer programs that simulate real life clinical scenarios for educational purposes. The European Commission co-funded Electronic Virtual Patient (eViP) programme is a collaboration among 8 universities working towards creating a shareable bank of virtual patients. eViP is creating an application profile of the MedBiquitous Virtual Patient specification to enable the exchange of interoperable virtual patient activities across institutions.