Large Language Model-Based Virtual Patient Systems for History-Taking in Medical Education: Comprehensive Systematic Review.

backgroundLarge language models (LLMs), such as GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 (OpenAI), have been transforming virtual patient systems in medical education by providing scalable and cost-effective alternatives to standardized patients. However, systematic evaluations of their performance, particularly for multimorbidity scenarios involving multiple coexisting diseases, are still limited.

objectiveThis systematic review aimed to evaluate LLM-based virtual patient systems for medical history-taking, addressing four research questions: (1) simulated patient types and disease scope, (2) performance-enhancing techniques, (3) experimental designs and evaluation metrics, and (4) dataset characteristics and availability.

methodsFollowing PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) 2020, 9 databases were searched (January 1, 2020, to August 18, 2025). Nontransformer LLMs and non-history-taking tasks were excluded. Multidimensional quality and bias assessments were conducted.

resultsA total of 39 studies were included, screened by one computer science researcher under supervision. LLM-based virtual patient systems mainly simulated internal medicine and mental health disorders, with many addressing distinct single disease types but few covering multimorbidity or rare conditions. Techniques like role-based prompts, few-shot learning, multiagent frameworks, knowledge graph (KG) integration (top-k accuracy 16.02%), and fine-tuning enhanced dialogue and diagnostic accuracy. Multimodal inputs (eg, speech and imaging) improved immersion and realism. Evaluations, typically involving 10-50 students and 3-10 experts, demonstrated strong performance (top-k accuracy: 0.45-0.98, hallucination rate: 0.31%-5%, System Usability Scale [SUS] ≥80). However, small samples, inconsistent metrics, and limited controls restricted generalizability. Common datasets such as MIMIC-III (Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-III) exhibited intensive care unit (ICU) bias and lacked diversity, affecting reproducibility and external validity.

conclusionsIncluded studies showed moderate risk of bias, inconsistent metrics, small cohorts, and limited dataset transparency. LLM-based virtual patient systems excel in simulating multiple disease types but lack multimorbidity patient representation. KGs improve top-k accuracy and support structured disease representation and reasoning. Future research should prioritize hybrid KG-chain-of-thought architectures integrated with open-source KGs (eg, UMLS [Unified Medical Language System] and SNOMED-CT [Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms]), parameter-efficient fine-tuning, dialogue compression, multimodal LLMs, standardized metrics, larger cohorts, and open-access multimodal datasets to further enhance realism, diagnostic accuracy, fairness, and educational utility.