As health professions education increasingly includes artificial intelligence, a fundamental question emerges: who should design these learning experiences? At Aquifer, the answer became clear through the development of eight Virtual Patient Encounters (VPEs) now integrated into our core clinical cases—the best innovations come from educators who understand both clinical practice and how students learn.
Virtual Patient Encounters use AI to create interactive conversations between students and simulated patients. Students must ask the right questions, respond to patient behaviors, and develop clinical reasoning skills in a dynamic environment that simulates actual practice. However, the technology itself isn't what makes these encounters effective. What matters is how they're designed.
Throughout the development and approval process, Aquifer's Consortium Board Members—all practicing clinicians and educators—brought a level of scrutiny that went far beyond mere accuracy checks. They trained their focus beyond the technology and centered their inquiry on AI patient realism and learning opportunities. They asked questions like:
The discipline and care they applied—thinking deeply about patient behavior patterns, considering what makes a teaching moment effective, questioning whether technology was truly enhancing learning—demonstrated that building educational AI requires educators, not just technologists.
Most educational technology is developed by companies that create products for educators to use. Aquifer operates differently: our content, and the products that emerge from it, is developed by a Consortium of over 100 health professions educators from across North America who are actively working with students. These aren't content editors updating guidelines. They're teachers asking: How do we help students develop clinical judgment? How can we make this as realistic and valuable as possible? How do we create learning experiences that prepare students for the complexity of real patients?
Virtual Patient Encounters represent an evolution, not a revolution. Aquifer's Consortium has always thought deeply about pedagogy and how to improve student learning. What VPEs do is open new possibilities for bringing nuance and realism to clinical education, serving students better through just-in-time active learning and immediate, actionable feedback.
The key insight from this development process is that educational technology becomes most powerful when it's shaped by educators who understand both patient care and learning. As AI continues to transform medical education, the question isn't whether to use it. It's whether we're building it with the right people at the table—educators who can ensure that innovation truly serves student learning and clinical practice.
That's what makes the difference between technology that impresses and technology that teaches.
The Consortium members who spent hours ensuring these VPEs behaved realistically while embedding clinical reasoning include:
Aquifer is a nonprofit founded by health professions educators for educators and students. Our Consortium supports our mission of delivering the best health care education by being part of the collaborative development and helping to ensure that our content is updated, maintained, supported, and expanded.