From Virtual Patients to AI-Powered Training: The Evolution of Medical Simulation

Abstract

Simulation is a learning technique or tool that allows medical professionals to have dynamic training for diagnosing and treating clinical-surgical pathologies. It can also be employed on the patient as a distraction to reduce pain and anxiety using virtual reality. The objective of this research was to determine the usefulness of medical simulation and its current advances, for which a bibliographic search was carried out of 58 medical articles obtained from databases such as PubMed, ScienceDirect, Mendeley, Latindex, published in the last 5 years that included observational studies, randomized studies, systematic reviews and meta-analyses referring to the research topic. It is concluded that the advances of simulation in medicine and the vast majority of medical specialties recommend implementing this technique for teaching, diagnosis, and treatment. In addition, it can also be used through virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and mixed reality to reduce stress in patients, being an advance in development; however, it was found that there are areas where the help of expert evaluators is indispensable, in topics such as resuscitation and physical rehabilitation where simulation did not surpass conventional treatment.