Immersive virtual patient encounters
A patient in a bay who answers your questions, winces where it hurts, and deteriorates if you take too long. History, examination and bedside findings unlocked by asking, not by menu-diving.
VR clinical reasoning · Pilot programme open
Practise the diagnosis before a patient depends on it.
IA-Dx Med is an immersive VR environment where a physician or medical student examines a virtual patient, orders investigations, and commits to a diagnosis — with the whole reasoning path recorded and debriefed, step by step. Diagnosis, rehearsed before it counts.
- patientmale · 61 y
- presentingsudden chest pain, 09:40
- historyhypertension · smoker
- exam unlockedpulses · BP both arms · chest
- Aortic dissection, type A committed
- Acute coronary syndrome kept
- Pulmonary embolism kept
- Pericarditis ruled down
- Oesophageal rupture ruled down
Diagnosis committed at 07:02 — no takebacks, exactly like the ward
- HR
- 104 bpm
- BP R / L
- 176 / 148 sys
- RR
- 22 /min
- SpO₂
- 96 %
- 12-lead ECG — sinus tach, non-specific 03:10
- Troponin — within reference 04:21
- Chest X-ray — widened mediastinum 05:36
- CT angiogram — ordered on commit 07:02
- 00:42Pain characterised early. "Tearing, radiating to the back" elicited on the second question.
- 01:58BP taken in one arm only. The inter-arm difference sat unmeasured for four minutes.
- 03:10Anchoring avoided. ACS kept on the list but not committed on a non-specific ECG.
- 05:36Mediastinum recognised. The X-ray finding re-ranked the differential correctly.
- 07:02Committed with a plan. Type A dissection, CT angiogram and surgical referral ordered together.
Illustrative teaching case. CASE-CHP-014 is a demonstration scenario — patient, values and timings are simulated content, not a real person or record.
1 committed Dx
Every case ends in a decision the learner must sign — the thing wards can't safely let juniors practise.
100% recorded
Each question asked, test ordered and ranking change is captured for the debrief. Nothing relies on memory.
0 sim labs
Runs on standalone headsets out of a charging case. No tracking rig, no dedicated room, no booking sheet.
AR + EN cases
Case content authored in Arabic and English, so the language of rehearsal matches the language of the ward.
The honest problem
Clinical reasoning is learned on real patients. That is the problem.
A student can read about aortic dissection for six years and still meet their first one at 3 a.m., on call, with a consultant twenty minutes away. Between the textbook and the ward there is almost nowhere to practise the actual skill — working a live presentation from first question to committed diagnosis.
Simulation centres were built to close that gap, and they help. But they are rooms: expensive to build, staffed to run, booked weeks out. A cohort of two hundred students shares a handful of scheduled slots, and a practising physician who wants to rehearse a rare presentation has essentially none.
-
01Reading is not reasoning
Students arrive on the ward knowing presentations they have never worked through. Recognising a description and driving a workup are different skills, and only one of them is examined by real patients.
-
02The rare cases never show up
A junior can finish training without ever seeing a dissection, an Addisonian crisis, or a necrotising fasciitis early enough to matter. The first encounter is the real one.
-
03Nobody can safely let you commit
On the ward, a junior's differential is always provisional — a senior decides. So the hardest moment of the job, signing your name to a diagnosis, goes unpractised until it counts.
-
04Simulation is a scarce room
Manikin suites cost hundreds of thousands, need technicians and faculty on the clock, and serve one small group at a time. Repetition — the thing learning actually requires — is exactly what they cannot offer.
The approach
The unit of learning is a committed diagnosis — and its debrief.
IA-Dx Med is not an anatomy flythrough. Inside the headset you take a history, examine, order investigations that cost simulated time and money, rank a differential — and then commit. The case does not end until you sign. Then the debrief shows you exactly how you reasoned, decision by decision.
The debrief is where the learning happens.
Every question you asked, every test you ordered, every re-ranking of your differential is on the record with a timestamp. The debrief replays your path against the case's teaching points: where you anchored, what you missed, what you caught early, and what the committed diagnosis cost or saved in simulated time.
Faculty see the same trace across a whole cohort — which cases students rush, which findings they systematically miss, where the reasoning breaks down. Not a quiz score. The reasoning itself.
-
aCommitted, not multiple-choice
You can keep three diagnoses in play while you work — but the case ends with one name on the line, and the debrief holds you to it.
-
bRepeatable until it is boring
Miss the inter-arm pressure difference today, run the case again tomorrow. A virtual patient has infinite patience and no risk.
// debrief · CASE-CHP-014 · attempt 2 of 2
// learner path vs. case teaching points
00:42 history.pain_character ✓ elicited early
01:58 exam.bp_both_arms ✗ delayed 4 m 06 s
└ teaching point: inter-arm differential
is a bedside clue that costs nothing
03:10 ddx.acs → kept, not committed ✓ anchoring avoided
04:21 invx.troponin → in range noted
05:36 invx.cxr → wide mediastinum ✓ recognised
└ ddx re-ranked: dissection to top
07:02 commit: aortic dissection, type A
└ plan: CT angiogram + surgical referral
// vs attempt 1: commit was 05:12 earlier,
// but on the wrong diagnosis. This is the point.The platform
Everything between "the patient in bay 4" and a signed diagnosis.
Seven parts of one loop: encounter, work up, commit, debrief — and the tools a faculty needs to run that loop across an entire cohort.
Differential workflow with committed decisions
Rank your working diagnoses as evidence arrives, rule down what you can defend ruling down — then commit to one. The commitment is the exam, and it cannot be skipped.
Case library: the common and the rare
Chest pain that is usually ACS and occasionally a dissection. The library spans everyday presentations and the once-in-a-career ones — because rarity is exactly what the ward cannot schedule.
Step-by-step debrief of the reasoning path
The full trace replayed against the case's teaching points: what you asked, when you asked it, where you anchored, what the delay cost. Attempt over attempt, you watch your own reasoning improve.
Cohort dashboards for faculty
See where a whole year group's reasoning breaks down: cases rushed, findings systematically missed, differentials that collapse too early. Assign cases the data says the cohort needs.
Standalone-headset deployment
A case of headsets and a Wi-Fi network is a simulation centre. Device management, offline case caching and classroom mode included — no lab build, no tracking rig, no technician.
Arabic and English case content
Histories are taken in the language patients actually speak. Every case ships with Arabic and English dialogue, findings and debrief content — authored together, not machine-translated after the fact — so rehearsal transfers directly to the regional ward.
How it works
One case, four moves. Then again, until it holds.
A full case runs in roughly the time a coffee takes to cool — short enough to repeat, long enough to be honest about the reasoning.
-
Meet the patient
Put on the headset and you are in the bay. Take the history in Arabic or English; the patient answers what you ask, and only what you ask.
-
Examine and investigate
Examine at the bedside, then order tests. Each investigation costs simulated time and money — a workup, not a shopping list.
-
Commit to a diagnosis
Rank your differential as evidence lands, then sign one name with a management plan. The case does not end until you do.
-
Debrief the reasoning
Step through your own path against the teaching points. Then run it again — or run the variant where the same complaint hides a different disease.
// deploying IA-Dx Med at an institution
requirements:
✓ standalone VR headsets # any recent 6-DoF model
✓ Wi-Fi for sync + dashboards # cases cache offline
✓ a room with chairs # seated & standing modes
not required:
✗ simulation laboratory
✗ external tracking rig
✗ dedicated technician
✗ gaming PCs or tethering
first cohort session: same week as deliveryA simulation centre that fits in a charging case.
Because IA-Dx Med runs entirely on standalone headsets, "capacity" stops meaning square metres. Twenty headsets is twenty simultaneous encounters — in a classroom, a clinical skills room, or a hospital seminar room at 7 a.m. before rounds.
Cases cache on the device, so a session survives a flaky network; results sync to the faculty dashboard when the connection returns. Device management is built in: push a new case list to every headset in the cabinet at once.
Who it's for
Built for the people who sign diagnoses — and the people who train them.
Institutional licensing per seat for schools and hospitals, with individual subscriptions for students in their clinical years.
Medical schools
Give every clinical-years student a caseload no rotation can promise — with cohort dashboards that show a faculty exactly where reasoning breaks down before the exam does.
Per-seat institutional licence · curriculum mapping support
Teaching hospitals
Extend an existing simulation centre — or stand one up without the room. Rehearse rare and high-stakes presentations on a schedule the ward could never offer.
Pilot programmes available · works alongside manikin suites
Residency programmes
Structured diagnostic rehearsal for juniors between calls — assigned by specialty, tracked by the programme, debriefed case by case rather than incident by incident.
Specialty case tracks · progress visible to programme directors
Medical students
An individual subscription for clinical years: run the cases your rotation didn't happen to include, as many times as it takes, before the first real one finds you.
Individual plans · pricing announced with general availability
Inside the library
Same complaint. Different disease. That's the curriculum.
Cases are organised the way patients actually arrive — by presentation, not by diagnosis. Each presentation branches into its common causes and its dangerous mimics, so the learner never knows in advance which one is in the bed.
-
CASE-CHP-014 rare mimic
Chest pain, 61 M
Sudden tearing pain radiating to the back in a hypertensive smoker. Looks like ACS until you measure both arms.
-
CASE-CHP-002 common
Chest pain, 54 F
Exertional tightness, diabetic, atypical language for a typical disease. The anchor case for the whole chest-pain track.
-
CASE-ABD-021 rare mimic
Abdominal pain, 26 F
Vomiting, hypotension, and a pigmented crease nobody examines. An Addisonian crisis hiding inside "gastroenteritis".
-
CASE-SOB-008 common
Breathlessness, 71 M
Orthopnoea, oedema, and a medication history that matters more than the examination. Heart failure, worked up properly.
-
CASE-FEV-017 time-critical
Fever and leg pain, 44 M
Pain out of proportion to a quiet-looking limb. The necrotising fasciitis case every junior should meet in VR first.
-
CASE-HED-005 common
Headache, 33 F
A worst-ever headache with a normal examination. When to be reassured, when to scan, and how to defend either call.
Illustrative sample of the case catalogue. Titles and timings shown are demonstration entries; the pilot case set is agreed with each institution's faculty, and every case is reviewed by a practising clinician before release.
Where we actually are
Pre-launch, and precise about it.
IA-Dx Med is being built with a medical faculty, ahead of its first pilot cohort. We publish numbers when they are true — named institutions, counted cases, quoted faculty — and not a day before. Until then, the scoreboard stays honest.
- Pilot institutions
- —
- Cases completed
- —
- Faculty endorsements
- —
Listed by name, with each institution's written permission, once the first pilot agreements are signed.
Counted from committed diagnoses inside the platform — not downloads, not sign-ups, not headset hours.
Quoted verbatim and attributed, after the first cohort reports. We will not paraphrase enthusiasm into evidence.
Incubated at An-Najah National University · Innopark, Nablus
IA-Dx Med is developed inside the university's Innopark, with the medical faculty and the university teaching hospital on the same campus. The people writing our cases teach clinical medicine; the first cohort that will test them is in their lecture halls; the wards those cases rehearse for are next door. That loop — author, rehearse, verify, revise — is the product's real infrastructure.
Pilot programme
Run the first cohort at your institution.
We are selecting a small number of medical schools and teaching hospitals for structured pilots: defined cohort, agreed case set, measured before and after, findings shared. If that sounds like your simulation committee's kind of rigour, we should talk.