A Voice-Enabled Virtual Patient System for Interactive Training in Standardized Clinical Assessment

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00709v1
• Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2025 21:18:08 GMT
• Title: A Voice-Enabled Virtual Patient System for Interactive Training in Standardized Clinical Assessment
• Authors: Veronica Bossio Botero, Vijay Yadav, Jacob Ouyang, Anzar Abbas, Michelle Worthington,
• Abstract summary: We introduce a voice-enabled virtual patient simulation system powered by a large language model (LLM)<n>This study describes the system's development and validates its ability to generate virtual patients who adhere to pre-defined clinical profiles.<n>Our findings suggest that LLM-powered virtual patient simulations are a viable and scalable tool for training clinicians.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Training mental health clinicians to conduct standardized clinical assessments is challenging due to a lack of scalable, realistic practice opportunities, which can impact data quality in clinical trials. To address this gap, we introduce a voice-enabled virtual patient simulation system powered by a large language model (LLM). This study describes the system's development and validates its ability to generate virtual patients who accurately adhere to pre-defined clinical profiles, maintain coherent narratives, and produce realistic dialogue. We implemented a system using a LLM to simulate patients with specified symptom profiles, demographics, and communication styles. The system was evaluated by 5 experienced clinical raters who conducted 20 simulated structured MADRS interviews across 4 virtual patient personas. The virtual patients demonstrated strong adherence to their clinical profiles, with a mean item difference between rater-assigned MADRS scores and configured scores of 0.52 (SD=0.75). Inter-rater reliability across items was 0.90 (95% CI=0.68-0.99). Expert raters consistently rated the qualitative realism and cohesiveness of the virtual patients favorably, giving average ratings between "Agree" and "Strongly Agree." Our findings suggest that LLM-powered virtual patient simulations are a viable and scalable tool for training clinicians, capable of producing high-fidelity, clinically relevant practice scenarios.

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