Duplicate patients used to create a patient with a robust history are called

• A. Trek patients
• B. Step patients
• C. Phase patients
• D. Seed patients

Answer: (B)

In building synthetic patient histories for training environments, the idea is to extend an existing record step by step to create a long, realistic timeline. Step patients are used because they serve as templates that you duplicate and then add data in incremental steps, stitching together encounters, events, and demographics to build a patient with a robust history. This stepwise approach ensures continuity and plausibility across years of care, which is exactly what you need when testing systems that rely on longitudinal data.

Seed patients are starting points, often used to generate initial data, but they aren’t described as the duplicates built up over time. Trek and Phase aren’t conventional terms for this process, so they don’t match the idea of incrementally expanding a history.