The term virtual patient is used to describe interactive computer simulations used in health care education[1] to train students on clinical processes such as making diagnoses and therapeutic decisions.
[2] Virtual patients attempt to combine modern technologies and game-based learning to facilitate education, and complement real clinical training.
[11] Simulated patients can be viewed as educational tools that enhance existing methods of clinical teaching, making them more efficient and increasing the fairness of skill evaluation.
Over-reliance on hypothetical "average" models has been criticized for not teaching medical students to identify the significant amount of normal variation seen in the real world.
[12] The MedBiquitous consortium established a working group in 2005 to create a free and open data standard for expressing and exchanging virtual patients between different authoring and delivery systems.