  In this paper, we describe the iterative participatory design of SOPHIE, an
online virtual patient for feedback-based practice of sensitive
patient-physician conversations, and discuss an initial qualitative evaluation
of the system by professional end users. The design of SOPHIE was motivated
from a computational linguistic analysis of the transcripts of 383
patient-physician conversations from an essential office visit of late stage
cancer patients with their oncologists. We developed methods for the automatic
detection of two behavioral paradigms, lecturing and positive language usage
patterns (sentiment trajectory of conversation), that are shown to be
significantly associated with patient prognosis understanding. These automated
metrics associated with effective communication were incorporated into SOPHIE,
and a pilot user study identified that SOPHIE was favorably reviewed by a user
group of practicing physicians.
