This year, our team at NEURAI Lab had the honor of presenting NurseTown at the 2025 IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CAI). We’re thrilled to share that our paper was accepted and published at the conference, where Qiwen (Fiona) Xiong and Yuqi Hu took the stage to share our vision of how large language models (LLMs) can transform the future of nursing education.
What is Nurse Town?
NurseTown is an AI-powered educational game designed to enhance clinical training for nursing students through immersive, interactive experiences. The system integrates large language models (LLMs), real-time conversational agents, 3D character animation, and dynamic, context-sensitive scenarios to simulate realistic nurse-patient interactions.
The platform emphasizes both affective and cognitive skill development. It supports the practice of essential soft skills, such as empathy, communication, and emotional intelligence, while also enabling students to engage in clinically relevant decision-making under variable and complex conditions. Each interaction is driven by learner input and followed by instant, detailed feedback, fostering self-reflection and reinforcing clinical reasoning.
By bridging theoretical instruction with experiential learning in a safe, controlled environment, NurseTown represents a novel approach to AI-enhanced, human-centered training in the health professions.
Training Through Mistakes: Real-Time Feedback in NurseTown Simulation
Qiwen (Fiona) presented a “Bad Nurse” example from NurseTown, in which a player acting as a nurse asked inappropriate questions to a virtual patient. The system flagged the behavior as unprofessional and generated a detailed performance report. The live demonstration highlighted how NurseTown leverages real-time feedback to help nursing students recognize and learn from mistakes in a safe, simulated environment.
AI for Good, and for Real
Qiwen (Fiona) shared, “I truly believe ‘AI for Good’ should not just be a concept or a slogan, but a commitment.” At NEURAI, that belief is deeply embedded in our work. We view “AI for Good” not simply as an aspirational vision, but as a shared responsibility. Projects like NurseTown represent a small but meaningful step toward a future where technology is not only intelligent but also compassionate. We are proud to contribute solutions that push the boundaries of AI while honoring the values that matter most in healthcare: empathy, integrity, and service.
As the work moves forward, there is still much more to learn, to create, and to care for. Qiwen (Fiona) concluded, “We’re just getting started.”
