Virtual Counselor Computer Program

Virtual counselor stands for a computer based program that works as a counselor of any person and in this way it substitutes the one on one traditional genetic counselors who were supposed to be more effective than the virtual counselor. In the Penn State College of Medicine a computer program has been developed that can interact with people in a very humane manner.

This newly developed virtual counselor is programmed with all the information regarding breast cancer and the genetic testing and has little risk of getting affected by the diseases. But on July 28, 2004 in a Journal of the American Medical Association it was published that these electronic products were not able to remove all the anxieties of a woman and to make her understand everything clearly.

But Michael J. Green, the M.D., M.S., associate professor of humanities and medicine, in the Penn State College of Medicine has removed all the confusions regarding this virtual counselor: The computer program is an alternative means of communicating information about genetic testing and may help women without access to genetic counselors to decide whether or not to have genetic testing for susceptibility to breast cancer.

It is not possible for all the women to have a free communication with the genetic counselors because of the scarcity of counselors. The virtual counselors happen to be of great help in these circumstances. Even more importantly these computer based programs can remember a lot more things than a mere human being and so can inform the client in many ways.

These Virtual counselors are specially programmed to inform about the condition of the person and whether she is having any risk of breast cancer or not. It can also describe how genes like BRCA1 and BRCA2 are responsible for cancer risk and what are the ways to get rid of this.

For the testing the acceptability of Virtual counselors a number of study volunteers were employed in six U.S medical centers such as Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pa.; Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network, Allentown, Pa.; University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston; Baylor Medical College, Houston; and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, Evanston, Illinois. And most surprisingly all of the volunteers happened to have had either personal or family histories of breast cancer.

For the purpose of testing all the women were divided into two groups, low risk and high risk. Low risk factor was defined by the fact of having less than 10 percent chance of carrying the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation and high risk was denoting the area of having a 10 percent or greater chance of carrying the mutation. And the virtual counselor counseled all of them. Eurekalert