Digital humans, virtual experts, and patient education and management: a new model for respiratory health communication

Chronic respiratory diseases are characterized by prolonged courses, fluctuating symptoms, complex care pathways, and a substantial reliance on out-of-hospital management, placing high demands on patients’ disease understanding, operational skills, self-monitoring, and long-term adherence. Patient education and management are the core determinants of symptom control, exacerbation prevention, rehabilitation participation, and improvement of long-term outcomes. Recent advances in artificial intelligence, medical large language models, digital humans, virtual experts, the Internet of Things, and metaverse medicine, are reshaping respiratory health and management from one-time in-clinic instruction toward a model that is continuous, individualized, contextualized, and interactive. In chronic respiratory disease management, these technologies of digital humans and virtual experts have shown promise in disease cognition building, inhaler instruction, interpretation of written action plans, pulmonary rehabilitation training, remote follow-up, and long-term health support, creating new opportunities for integrated hospital-community-home care. Nonetheless, current evidence remains constrained by substantial heterogeneity, a lack of hard clinical endpoints, limited adaptation for older adults and people with low health literacy, insufficient algorithmic transparency, and unclear boundaries of responsibility. The concepts of metaverse medicine, medical GPT, and BAIMGPT proposed by Professor Chunxue Bai and colleagues provide important theoretical and technical support for localized practice in this field. Therefore, this study aims to integrate recent international reviews, landmark studies, consensus guidelines and research from Professor Bai’s group, and systematically review the theoretical foundation, core applications, technical system, challenges and future directions of digital humans, virtual experts and patient education in respiratory health communication, so as to inform innovative strategies for chronic respiratory disease management.

Key Words: digital human; virtual expert; BAIMGPT; internet of things; metaverse medicine; patient education and management; chronic respiratory disease