Principal Investigator:  Peter Yellowlees, M.D., M.B.B.S.
Co-Investigator:  Don Hilty, M.D.

This project is designed to assess whether psychiatrists can accurately diagnose patients and create treatment plans when supplied with carefully formatted electronic histories and video clips of patient interviews with their primary care providers. The patients are clinically assessed in both English and Spanish, with cross-translation by trained interpreters, allowing us to also measure diagnostic reliability across languages, as well as between psychiatrists. The two-year project is funded by Blue Shield and commenced in July 2007.

Principal Investigator:  Peter Yellowlees, M.D.

Virtual reality environments have developed rapidly in recent years, especially in the computer gaming industry. "Virtual worlds," or computer simulations of the real world, are now accessible via broadband Internet. These are attracting thousands of users on a daily basis, most of whom build fantasy environments. Our research program at UC Davis is exploring the use of these environments in healthcare. In one project, we have built a demonstration of examples of virtual auditory and visual hallucinations of patients with schizophrenia which occur in a 3-dimensional model of the Sacramento County Mental Health Treatment Center. In a second project, we have constructed a scale model of the Sacramento Exposition Center set up as it was in May 2006 when it was used as for a large-scale bioterrorism response emergency medical clinic. The virtual environment includes moving "patients" who automatically flow through the clinic, and allows health and security staff to take up practice positions in the clinic and experience what working in such an environment would be like. We have evaluated the environment from both technical and human perspectives.