Progress in the development of a virtual patient, a European Dieting_Lab project led by UNEATLANTICO

A new virtual meeting took place last July between the collaborators of the European Dieting_Lab project led by the European University of the Atlantic. This project is funded by the Spanish Service for the Internationalization of Education (SEPIE, Spanish Agency of the European Program Eramus +).

The meeting was attended by Sandra Sumalla, Iñaki Elío, Thomas Prola, and Kilian Tutusausus representing UNEATLANTICO, Antonio Ferreras, from the University of Valladolid (UVa) and Agnieska Strzelecka, Szymon Osowski, Izabella Jaros and Magdalena Lelonek from the Jan Kochanowski University of Kielce – UJK.

Iñaki Elío, academic director of the degree in Human Nutrition and Dietetics at UNEATLANTICO, welcomed all members. Killian Tutusaus showed the virtual patient prototype’s progress to the members through a structure created with the dialogueflow program. He also explained that the prototype can answer questions and that the biochemical and anthropometric information will, for the moment, be shown directly to the student.

Dr. Elío explained that the first step taken was developing a battery of questions and answers for the case study to ensure that the bot had the necessary structure to simulate a conversation.

Kilian Tutusaus insisted on the importance of context in a question when the bot was being interviewed. “For example, if you talk about breakfast and then you want to talk about bread, the bot establishes that it is breakfast, until you change the meal,” he stated.

For his part, Antonio Ferreras (UVa) is developing a program to directly upload the template to the bot to avoid doing so manually and so streamline all processes.