Frequently asked questions

The clinical communication intelligence platform for healthcare. Clinical communication intelligence means making how healthcare teams handle important conversations visible, interpretable, and improvable. Clinicians, medical learners, and patient facing staff practice spoken conversations with AI patients. ClinicalSim scores each simulation against published clinical frameworks or the institution's own policy, service standard, script, or rubric, quotes the participant's own words under every score, and shows what they did well and what to practice next. ClinicalSim gives clinicians and staff spoken practice with AI patients and measures each simulation against the standard your institution already holds.

No. USMLE discontinued Step 2 CS in 2021, and no national successor now assesses spoken clinical communication. ClinicalSim adds repeatable practice and formative evidence within a program. It is not a national exam or a replacement for human judgment.

ClinicalSim extends standardized patient (SP) programs and does not replace them. SP encounters remain important for live coaching and high-stakes assessment. ClinicalSim adds repeatable practice between those encounters, without requiring another actor or room for each attempt.

A general AI assistant can improvise a conversation. ClinicalSim uses physician-authored cases with fixed objectives, named frameworks, repeatable scoring logic, and transcript evidence a faculty member can review across learners.

Communication remediation is the structured practice and feedback a program uses to help a learner improve interpersonal and communication skills. In a CERA survey of 267 family medicine program directors, 93% reported at least one resident in remediation during the prior three years, and 50% selected an accessible remediation toolkit as the most important tool for improving the process (Frazier et al., Family Medicine, 2021). ClinicalSim adds repeatable practice and transcript evidence for faculty and CCC review.

Staff practice listening, explanation, teach back, or service conversations with AI patients and receive feedback tied to the standard the institution already teaches. Under access rules set before launch, leaders can review aggregate cohort or unit patterns to choose the next practice focus.

Yes. Environmental services, food service, transport, and other patient facing teams can use browser based cases designed for their role. Clinical content should stay limited to what that role would handle in practice.

Yes. An institution can use anonymous participant IDs and receive aggregate unit or cohort reports. Named completion records and named coaching access are separate choices that should follow the training policy and labor agreements set before launch.

ClinicalSim does not predict patient experience scores, readmissions, safety events, claims, or other clinical or business outcomes. Any comparison with institution-held outcome data requires a separate study plan.

Formative scores must not be used for employment decisions, discipline, compensation, credentialing, privileging, or licensure. Institutions should set access, retention, and reporting rules before staff participate.

Learners practice privately, without a faculty observer in the encounter. They can repeat a case before sharing the report with a coach or program.

Voice practice can surface pacing, silence, word choice, and real-time responses to emotion. It cannot assess eye contact, body language, or physical presence, so those skills remain part of live encounters and human review.

Learners can practice on any device, a phone, a tablet, or a desktop, wherever they are. ClinicalSim runs entirely in the browser, so there is nothing to download and no app to install.

A typical ClinicalSim encounter takes between 3 and 10 minutes, short enough to fit into a clinical day and repeat as often as a learner needs.

Read the longer answer in the FAQ for medical educators

ClinicalSim currently supports English.

Named physicians write and review each case for clinical accuracy, standards alignment, and fit with its learning objectives. The full process is documented on the methodology page.

Faculty can work with ClinicalSim staff to develop a case for a specific learner group and communication objective. Case development support depends on the pilot or study scope.

Before release, each case is run repeatedly to check the AI patient's role, the scoring and feedback, and whether the case gives learners a fair chance to show each assessed behavior. Clinical and technical reviewers revise the case before publication.

Each completed simulation produces scored fields from the case rubric and a narrative report. My Progress uses those scores to show assignment completion and competency trends, based on the program's configuration. A case that cannot assess performance above a certain level is excluded from the overall rollup when that ceiling would make strong performance look low. Learners do not see peer comparisons.

Each encounter is a voice conversation between the learner and an AI patient designed for the case, captured as a timestamped transcript. For every scored competency and framework step, the platform draws one or two verbatim excerpts that demonstrate the behavior, or documents its absence, so each score is traceable to the moment that supports it, rather than serving as an unexplained rating.

GME cases use the competency framework and rubric approved for the program. The report scores only the behaviors the case gives the learner a fair chance to show. Faculty can use the report as one source of evidence in CCC review.

UME cases align to the Foundational Competencies for Undergraduate Medical Education (AAMC, AACOM, and ACGME) and the AAMC Core Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) for Entering Residency. Because the Foundational Competencies are not published with the milestones' five-level scale, ClinicalSim does not assign a numeric level for UME; it records whether each competency was demonstrated and scores performance through the applied communication or skill rubric. Entrustment remains a program decision that this evidence informs.

No. ClinicalSim scores are formative evidence that informs program judgment, not a stand-alone basis for promotion, remediation, or other high-stakes decisions.

A competency framework is the standard a program approves for a case. A communication framework is a published model of communication behavior, such as SPIKES or Calgary-Cambridge. A rubric turns the relevant framework into scored items for that case.

Yes. A case may use more than one communication framework when each one measures a different part of the task. Every framework names its published source, and programs may add their own rubrics. The report scores each framework separately.

ClinicalSim uses representative frameworks including SPIKES, the Kalamazoo Essential Elements Communication Checklist (KEECC-A), SEGUE, NURSE, REMAP, SBAR, I-PASS, TeamSTEPPS, CANDOR, and Calgary-Cambridge. Full citations are maintained in the ClinicalSim Frameworks Bibliography; see the full methodology page for representative sources.

Each encounter produces a report with rubric scores, strengths, priority gaps, and suggested next steps. Every scored item cites evidence from the transcript. The report is formative evidence for the learner and faculty reviewer, not a verdict or a substitute for human judgment.

Read the longer answer in the FAQ for medical educators

Yes. Faculty can rehearse corrective feedback, professionalism concerns, bedside teaching, and peer conversations. They receive the same framework-based report and transcript evidence used in learner cases.

ClinicalSim currently supports graduate medical education, undergraduate medical education, communication remediation, and faculty development. Cases and frameworks change with the learner, specialty, and conversation.

Programs set access before launch. Faculty can review the practice records their role permits, so they can coach a learner without sitting in the session. Learners always see their own reports and do not see peer comparisons.

Yes. Each practice report maps observed behavior to the standard approved for the case and cites the learner's words. A CCC can review it alongside faculty observation and the other evidence it already uses. The report does not replace faculty judgment or the committee's decision.

Read the longer answer in the FAQ for medical educators

An engagement usually starts with a communication assessment, in which one group practices a conversation or two with AI patients against the standard the institution already holds. A longer program can include that baseline, and a continuing engagement extends practice and review across more teams. No price is published. ClinicalSim scopes each engagement with the institution and quotes it directly.

Communication training is usually limited by how many sessions faculty and standardized patients can staff. ClinicalSim adds practice between those sessions: a participant can repeat a case from any device, and every score quotes the words they used, so the feedback is about their own conversation rather than conversations in general. ClinicalSim extends a standardized patient program and does not replace it. SP encounters remain the gold standard for live coaching and high-stakes assessment.

Some institutions could, and it helps to know what the work involves. A working program needs cases written for each conversation and learner level, a rubric mapped element by element to the institution's standard, review of the scoring against real transcripts before release, and voice, privacy, and data handling that a security review will accept. The methodology page describes how ClinicalSim builds and scores cases, and the trust page describes how it handles data, so a team weighing a build can compare the two directly.

ClinicalSim does not promise a return, and it does not convert scores into dollars. What a program can expect to see is practice volume, scores against its own standard, and the participant's words behind each score, which it can weigh against its own goals. ClinicalSim does not predict patient experience scores, readmissions, safety events, claims, or other clinical or business outcomes. Any comparison with institution-held outcome data requires a separate study plan.

A browser and a list of learners. ClinicalSim runs on any phone, tablet, or desktop with nothing to download and no app to install, and a typical encounter takes 3 to 10 minutes. Someone has to hold the Project Manager or Admin role to build a cohort, choose the cases, and invite learners, which can be done in bulk. There is no simulation center booking, no actor to recruit, and no room to reserve.

The voice service is the one thing a hospital network sometimes blocks. Firewalls, VPNs, and web filters can cut the voice connection before a session starts, which to a learner looks like a slow network rather than a block. The briefing page runs a connection test that checks whether the network can actually reach the voice service and, when it cannot, says so plainly and names what to ask IT to allow. The check is advisory and never stops a learner from starting.

Communication training often involves several teams. Program directors, DIOs and GME leadership, simulation center directors, clinical competency committees, medical school and UME leadership, faculty and clinician educators, risk and patient safety, and quality and patient experience may each help set the goals, fund the work, or support participants. The evaluation page explains what each role needs from an assessment.

Yes. Four complete AI patient simulations are published with the audio, full transcript, and scored report, with no sign-in and no form. The reports show what the learner did well, where more practice would help, and the learner's own words behind each score. Reading one shows exactly what a participant and an authorized coach receive.

Research applications are reviewed on a rolling basis and ClinicalSim typically responds within 1 to 2 weeks. The deciding question is whether the platform genuinely fits the study rather than whether the study flatters the platform, so a proposal needing a capability ClinicalSim does not have is better turned down than stretched.

ClinicalSim stores recordings, transcripts, account data, and program data to provide practice history and faculty review. Access depends on the learner's institutional arrangement. The trust and data handling page describes current collection, access, retention, and deletion practices.

Read the longer answer in the FAQ for medical educators

Yes. Depending on the study, ClinicalSim can provide platform access, case development support, participant onboarding, structured exports of study data, and technical documentation for an IRB submission. The research page explains how to propose a study.

Every score cites one or two excerpts from the transcript, so a reviewer can check the rating against what the learner said. ClinicalSim is testing score performance in pilots and does not claim that its ratings are more accurate or fairer than faculty judgment. The report is formative evidence that a faculty member or committee can accept, question, or override.

Read the longer answer in the FAQ for medical educators