What Is a Virtual Patient?

The "Virtual Human" mentioned here is not a virtual host on the Internet, but a three-dimensional model synthesized by digital technology to simulate real human organs. This model not only has the appearance of the human body and the appearance of various organs such as liver, heart, kidney, etc., but also has the metabolism function of each organ, which can more realistically show the normal physiological state and various changes of the human body.

Virtual person

(Medical terms)

The "Virtual Human" mentioned here is not the kind of virtual host on the Internet, but through

The purpose of developing "virtual humans" is to provide more refined presentation conditions for research in medicine or other disciplines. For example, researching surgical plans or testing new drugs can allow "virtual people" to act as testers. Researchers at a research institute in the United States, in order to test the efficacy of a new drug for treating diabetes, first manipulated a computer to make "virtual people" develop diabetes. This process is very simple. Just click with a mouse to "remove" the pancreas or other organs of the "virtual human" and change the weight of the "virtual human". A healthy "virtual human" can be a few seconds later Become a diabetic. Then, the researchers input the data of the trial of new drugs into the computer, constantly observe the response of the "virtual patient", adjust the dosage and method of medication, and finally draw conclusions. This method can save researchers at least 3 years. Now, in addition to developing new drugs for diabetes, researchers are also trying to use "virtual people" to treat rheumatoid arthritis,

Virtual Human Medicine Reference

Conducive to the training of excellent surgeons. In the past, it was necessary to train a highly skilled surgeon with hands-on treatment, and he had to practice the operation technique on the patient through the master's repeated apprenticeship practice. Now with virtual humans, surgeons can be trained on computer-operated virtual human models. Before the operation, you can also perform a surgery on the virtual person's body. The incision section and tissue section will be displayed on the computer to provide a scientific reference for the doctor to make a preoperative plan.

Virtual Human Pharmaceutical Experiment

With virtual humans, doctors and pharmaceutical companies can first test new drugs on virtual humans that have exactly the same physical data as patients. Doctors can first enter the data that affects drugs into a computer, and let the "virtual patient" first try to "eat" them. The "virtual patient" will show the physiological response after taking the medicine, thereby helping the doctor to prescribe the right medicine. This method can improve the accuracy of drug administration and the efficiency of developing new drugs and marketing new drugs. Related experiments have been carried out in the United States.

Virtual Human Military Application

Virtual humans are also valuable in military medicine. For example, you can use virtual humans to test the power of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Current nuclear explosion tests are performed using animals. The animals were placed at different distances from the nuclear explosion center before the test, and the animals were retrieved for inspection after the nuclear explosion. With a virtual person, you can directly take her to experiment.

Virtual human tumor treatment

Radiation therapy is currently an important method for treating tumor diseases. However, since doctors who are currently doing radiation therapy can only adjust the amount of radiation based on experience, patients often worry about receiving excessive radiation during this process. Now with virtual humans, doctors can first perform radiation therapy on virtual humans, determine the actual radiation usage through changes in their bodies, and finally use them on real patients, thus further improving the safety of treatment.

With the "virtual visible person", people can accurately simulate various complex surgical operations, cosmetic surgery, and predict the effect of postoperative operations in advance; they can use the "digital virtual person" experimental platform to conduct research and design of artificial organs , Improve and innovate surgical instruments.

Its effect is also obvious in national defense medicine. For example, in the atomic bomb explosion, we originally put a group of dogs or other creatures 2 or 3 kilometers away from the explosion site. It is inhumane to speculate the damage to the human body by looking at the damage to the creatures after the explosion. With the virtual human, the damage to human can be inferred by judging the damage of the virtual human.

Not long ago, on the "Shenzhou III" spacecraft launched by our country, relevant departments installed human models of astronauts, and various sensors were installed on them in order to obtain various physiological information of the human body under space operating conditions. If you have a "digital virtual person", you can completely replace these experimental human models to obtain more accurate and reliable information.

Even in sports, virtual humans have a wide range of uses. Through the study of the state of each muscle or bone of the whole body of the athlete who won the championship at the moment of explosive power, the coach can better train his team members so that they can achieve good results at critical moments.