At the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, preparing future healthcare professionals involves more than imparting clinical knowledge. Students must also learn to communicate with patients, convey difficult news, and handle unpredictable conversations.
For Clint Carlson, MS, Director of Education Technology Innovations, improving those skills is central to his work.
Clint leads the campus’ Live AI Avatars @ CU-AMC project, which uses HeyGen's LiveAvatar to create interactive AI patients and other characters for realistic communication training.
“Medical education is incredibly detailed, nuanced, and robust, but a weak point has been just the logistics of being able to practise these conversations with the public,” Clint said.
What began as an initiative to improve patient interactions has expanded across the campus, helping future healthcare professionals improvise with confidence.
Overcoming the limitations of traditional patient simulations
Traditionally, medical students practised interactions with standardised patients, trained actors portraying individuals with specific conditions.
Although valuable, these simulations were difficult to schedule and provided limited opportunities for repeated practice.
“Before LiveAvatar, it was really a matter of trying to book a 15-minute slot each semester at our simulation centre, where they would work with a trained actor who was available at that particular time,” Clint explained.
HeyGen's LiveAvatar removes many of those constraints.
“These live avatars are alive and on-demand 24 hours a day, who are fresh before and after lunch, that you can practise with either in your home or on your bus ride or wherever that could be,” Clint said.
Students can direct their learning, asking avatars to make conversations more challenging, simplify their language, or continue in another language, such as Spanish.
“It has been incredible to develop this diverse portfolio of avatars for all these learners, giving them the freedom to guide those conversations in the way that is most useful to them in their individual circumstances.”
Preparing healthcare professionals for every conversation
Unlike earlier simulation technologies that relied on predetermined dialogue, LiveAvatar supports unscripted conversations.
“When we have conversations with anybody, particularly patients, we're no longer choosing from three scripted items that we might say to that individual,” Clint said. “It's dynamic and unique to the circumstances of what's going on there and to the individual in conversation.”
Students can practise responding to unexpected questions, emotional reactions, and difficult situations.
”Some of these avatars, honestly, we're delivering terrible, earth-shattering news to, and that needs to be part of the conversation and practice also,” Clint said.
Applications now span multiple departments.
Medical and dental students practise patient assessments and consent conversations. Physiotherapy students rehearse pain management discussions. Faculty members practise delivering difficult feedback to their students, while public health officials simulate conversations with journalists and state representatives.
”We use these avatars to practise in a safe space where you're free to make mistakes, where you could say something you might never say to a real person but wanted to explore how the scenario would unfold if you did,” Clint said.
The objective remains consistent: to help healthcare professionals respond and improvise confidently when conversations don't go as expected.
Creating realistic patients with personalised feedback
Building believable interactions requires more than an avatar that looks and sounds human.
Clint, in partnership with various programme Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), collaborates to develop detailed backgrounds, including medical histories, personal circumstances, and motivations that influence each avatar's responses.
”The most important thing that we found in those realistic pieces is providing motivation, as you would to an actor,” Clint explained.
That includes realistic imperfections.
A patient might return for a follow-up appointment having forgotten information they previously understood, requiring students to recognise misunderstandings and adapt their communication.
“We've had some interesting things in kind of training these avatars to be more human by putting in intentional flaws,” Clint said.
Clint has also developed a clinical dashboard where students can review patient records, vital signs, and medical imaging – alongside the conversation practice.
Afterwards, avatars can switch into assessment mode, provide rubric-based feedback, and generate reports for instructors.
Scaling personalised training across campus
As more departments adopt LiveAvatar, Clint is expanding personalised learning.
One upcoming project will provide 55 faculty members with individual AI avatars throughout a three-month leadership course.
“Building the avatar is never the bottleneck on the project,” Clint said. “LiveAvatar and HeyGen make this so thoughtful to build workflows to do this quickly at scale.”
The LiveAvatar API enables customised experiences across departments, each with different educational objectives.
“In the past, the communication curriculum was limited by the logistics of delivering it in person with one-to-one support. Education cannot scale that way,” Clint explained.
Student feedback has been encouraging. Learners frequently report feeling better prepared for conversations with standardised patients and real patients.
Some initially question AI simulations, only to change their perspective after one interaction.
”In 15 minutes, they've completely changed their attitude about how useful all of this is going to be and come to expect it.”
Bringing AI patients into the physical world
Clint's next ambition is bringing LiveAvatar beyond computer screens.
His team is exploring augmented reality experiences that could place interactive AI patients inside physical simulation environments.
“We're really pushing towards experiential one-to-one education, and LiveAvatar is providing us the tools to get there,” Clint said.
For Clint, the long-term impact extends beyond the classroom.
“Now I have found a particular toolset in building out this platform that is better preparing generations of public health individuals.”
What began as an effort to improve communication is helping the university rethink how future healthcare professionals learn to connect with patients.
As Clint puts it, LiveAvatar “Gives me the tools to empower others to do more of what they do best – cultivating capacity, curiosity, and confidence in every organisation I serve.”
