Alabama Medical University won the Virtual Patient Challenge thanks to MedicActiV

15 June 2020

Each year, teams of students from the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine (ACOM) in the United States compete in a simulation competition, the “Virtual Patient Challenge“. The winning team then competes in the national competition in Washington DC.

ACOM is a four-year school of osteopathic medicine located in Dothan, Alabama. As an academic division of the Houston County Health Care Authority, the private, non-profit college was founded in 2010 to help address the shortage of primary care physicians in Alabama. ACOM is Alabama’s third largest medical school and the state’s premier osteopathic medical school.

This year with the COVID-19 pandemic, the competition had to be held remotely, online, using virtual patients. Usually, teams of five students work together around a fictitious patient to diagnose his or her illness and adopt best care practices. They gather around a simulation dummy and work simultaneously by asking questions, performing a clinical examination, etc…

The 2020 edition of the “Virtual Patient Challenge” therefore took place remotely. The students of the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine decided to use our MedicActiV digital simulation platform. 

The ACOM teams competed against 14 other teams from across the country. The ACOM students who used the MedicActiV platform won the 2020 Virtual Patient Challenge award. They were able to create a numerical simulation case with a virtual patient using the platform’s authoring tool. As with the simulation dummy, they were able to perform a clinical examination, access the patient’s medical file, and even chat with the patient.

More information & report here.