joeljames270/virtual-patient-profiles-sample

VHS Patient Profiles — Nutrition Education Simulation

Dataset Summary

A curated collection of 8 richly structured synthetic patient personas designed for healthcare education simulations, with a primary focus on dietetics and nutrition counseling training. Each record represents a complete clinical case with demographic, clinical, psychosocial, and behavioral dimensions, along with structured guidance for educators and AI simulators.

Profiles are intended for use in virtual patient simulation platforms where students practice clinical nutrition competencies: applying the Nutrition Care Process (NCP), formulating PES statements, conducting motivational interviewing (MI), integrating medication management with nutrition care, and identifying interprofessional and community resources.

Supported Tasks

• Virtual patient simulation: Each profile supports a full simulated clinical encounter. The information_disclosure section defines what the patient volunteers, what must be elicited, what is reluctant, and what is hidden in the chart.
• LLM fine-tuning / prompting: Profiles can serve as grounding documents for AI patient roleplay models.
• Curriculum design: The learning_opportunities section maps each patient to specific pedagogical objectives.

Languages

English (all profiles). Two patients have noted bilingual backgrounds (Spanish/English, Hindi/English), which is reflected in the demographics.language field.

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Dataset Structure

Data Instances

Each line of patients.jsonl is one self-contained JSON object representing a single patient. Example top-level keys:

{
  "patient_overview": {...},
  "demographics": {...},
  "clinical_profile": {...},
  "medication_profile": {...},
  "nutrition_profile": {...},
  "psychosocial_profile": {...},
  "information_disclosure": {...},
  "learning_opportunities": {...},
  "metadata": {...}
}

Data Fields

Section	Key Fields	Description
patient_overview	name, age, sex, description, keywords	High-level identity and searchable tags
demographics	occupation, ethnicity, language, insurance, cultural_context	Socioeconomic and cultural background
clinical_profile	primary_diagnosis, secondary_diagnoses, laboratory_data, vital_signs, anthropometrics	Full clinical picture including labs and vitals
medication_profile	medications[] (name, dose, frequency, purpose, adherence, patient_concerns), supplements_and_otc	Current regimen with adherence patterns and patient-stated concerns
nutrition_profile	dietary_pattern, food_preferences, meal_pattern, hydration, physical_activity, substance_use, sleep	Behavioral and dietary habits
psychosocial_profile	goals, concerns, beliefs, motivations, fears, barriers, strengths, readiness_to_change	Full psychosocial model for motivational interviewing
information_disclosure	initial_information, discoverable_information, reluctant_information, hidden_information	Layered disclosure structure for simulation realism
learning_opportunities	opportunities[] (learning_objective, expected_discoveries, possible_patient_reactions)	Structured pedagogical guidance per patient
metadata	assumptions, optional_details	Generation assumptions and optional character details

Data Splits

The dataset ships as a single split (train). All 8 records are in patients.jsonl.

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Patient Roster

Name	Age	Sex	Ethnicity	Primary Diagnosis	Key Learning Focus
Dominic Rivera	22	M	Puerto Rican	Poorly controlled T2DM	Cultural humility, healthcare mistrust, MI
Yvette Armstrong	64	F	Eastern European American	Stage II Hypertension + T2DM	Health literacy, sodium education
Nisha Patel	29	F	Indian-American	T2DM (first hospitalization)	Anxiety, detailed questioning, MI
Omar Sinclair	45	M	African-American	Dyslipidemia	Medication skepticism, cardiovascular risk
Marcus Ramirez	59	M	Hispanic/Latino	Heart Failure + T2DM	Early satiety, comorbidity integration
Walter Greene	72	M	African-American	Uncontrolled T2DM + CHF + CKD	Dietary non-adherence, aging, social isolation
Wyatt Nelson	18	M	White American	T2DM + Obesity + Dyslipidemia	Adolescent counseling, constipation
Vladko Bareche	31	M	Asian Indian	T2DM + Substance Use Disorder	Immigration barriers, substance use, vegetarian diet

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Dataset Creation

Curation Rationale

The profiles were generated to support a virtual human simulation platform for dietetics and health professions education. Real patient data was not used. Each persona was designed to represent a distinct cluster of clinical and psychosocial challenges that nutrition students commonly encounter, spanning age, ethnicity, health literacy, cultural context, and disease complexity.

Source Data

All profiles are synthetically generated. Clinical values (labs, vitals, medications) are constructed to be internally consistent and clinically plausible but do not represent real individuals.

Annotations

The learning_opportunities section serves as structured annotation for each case, mapping patient behaviors to educational objectives aligned with the Nutrition Care Process and ACEND competencies.

Personal and Sensitive Information

No real individuals are represented. Names, demographics, and clinical details are entirely fictional. The dataset does include synthetic sensitive health information (substance use, mental health, STI risk) within specific profiles, which is intentional for educational fidelity.

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Considerations for Using the Data

Social Impact

These profiles are designed to foster cultural humility, empathy, and evidence-based practice in nutrition education. The diversity of patient backgrounds is intentional and meant to prepare students for real-world clinical populations.

Discussion of Biases

• Profiles reflect common clinical presentations and cultural contexts as understood at the time of creation. They may not cover the full range of lived experiences.
• AI models trained or prompted with these profiles should be evaluated for whether they reproduce or amplify stereotypes present in the synthetic personas.

Other Known Limitations

• 8 profiles is a small dataset. It is intended as a seed corpus for a simulation platform, not for large-scale statistical training.
• Some profiles contain minor inconsistencies introduced during generation (e.g., duplicate list entries, abbreviated field values in some records). These are noted in metadata.assumptions.

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Additional Information

Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite the VHS (Virtual Human Simulation) project at Rutgers University.

License

CC BY 4.0