Development of an ISDN networked medical consultation system for the Hyper Hospital

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The "Hyper Hospital" is a novel medical care system which will be constructed on an electronic information network, The human interface of the Hyper Hospital based on the modern virtual reality technology is expected to enhance patients' ability to heal by providing computer-supported on-line visual consultation. In order to investigate the effects and features of on-line visual consultation in the Hyper Hospital, we developed ISDN networked medical consultation system using the two "Indy" workstations made by Silicon Graphics. We also developed two types computer graphics agents which have humanoid and unhumonoid facial images to create pseudo-perdonality. We conducted experiments to clarify the influence of distant-confrontation interviews using the system on the talking behavior of interviewees in the context of simulated doctor-patient interactions. The results of the present experiments suggest there were a tendency that the interviewee became more verbose or talkative in the computer-mediated interviews than in the live interview. Furthermore, the results suggest the higher reality of computer-created environment had a possibility to decrease the talkativeness of interviewees. We discussed that the prototype system of the Hyper Hospital developed in the present study was to be applicable to the real medical environment.