Voice-interactive virtual simulated patients as a complement to standardized patient training in pharmacy education: A pilot evaluation

INTRODUCTION: Standardized patients (SPs) are widely used in pharmacy education for communication skills training, but high resource demands limit practice frequency. Voice-interactive virtual simulated patients (VSPs) powered by generative artificial intelligence may serve as a scalable complement, yet evidence supporting their use in pharmacy education remains limited. METHODS: We conducted a single-center, cross-sectional pilot evaluation of a voice-interactive VSP system among 62 fourth- and fifth-year pharmacy students who had previously completed traditional SP-based training. Students engaged with two psychiatric scenarios (community-pharmacy depression counseling and inpatient bipolar disorder) using the WebView-based VSP on personal devices, and then completed a 12-item Likert questionnaire covering system usability, perceived educational value, direct comparison with prior SP training, and priority improvement areas. Responses were summarized as medians with interquartile ranges and as frequencies; free-text comments were examined using conventional content analysis. RESULTS: Overall satisfaction was high (54/62, 87.1%). In the direct comparison with prior SP training, most students (37/62, 59.6%) judged SP training more effective, whereas 14 (22.6%) rated the two approaches equally effective and 11 (17.8%) rated the VSP more effective. As a supplement, 51 students (82.3%) considered the VSP suitable or very suitable. Voice recognition accuracy was the most frequently identified improvement priority (38/62, 61.3%). CONCLUSIONS: Students found the voice-interactive VSP system usable and perceived it as educationally meaningful, primarily as a complement to rather than a replacement for SP training. Findings inform a planned three-year multi-cohort evaluation using objective competency assessment based on the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE).