How Artificial Intelligence is transforming medical education

A few months ago, I was attending an orthopaedic conference  in the UK, and I happened to speak to a renowned thought leader in paediatric orthopaedics. Our conversation wandered into various topics, including the use of AI in his field.  I was explaining to him how I reckoned in the future, AI would transform how surgeons learned. He immediately  interjected in his short but animated voice, saying , “not in the future but now”. I said, “ what do you mean?” He said , “okay,  let me show you something . Give me the name of one of your products, and I will show you how AI can be used to create content instantly”. Fascinated by all of this , being a techno-enthusiast myself, I gave him the name of a product I thought it would be great to give his theory a test . He opened an AI digital media generation app on his mobile phone and started to dictate about creating a presentation for a workshop for  young surgeons in pediatric orthopaedics using the product which I had mentioned to him. A few minutes later , the app created a podium-ready presentation, including a surgical instruction video that could be used almost immediately for training. He also mentioned that he could ask the app to translate the presentation into any language instantly. This was just amazing to experience as I had never seen anything like this before, despite having used AI myself for various things related to my work. This experience got me to think about how AI could redefine medical education.

Why this matters

Medical education has been taught using traditional means, for example, lectures, textbooks,  and seminars. However, some  teaching methods have limitations for the learners, such as language, geography, affordability, and access .  AI will probably transform how medical education is developed, delivered, and evaluated for the learners and educators alike.

In this blog, I want to cover the five areas in which I envisage how AI could transform medical education. These areas are:  the empowerment of educators, the customisation of medical education , the role AI plays in clinical reasoning , the improvement of teaching material , and mentoring.

Empowerment of educators

AI could help clinical educators to more reduce the administrative burden of clinical education  by automating things such as learning plans for medical students, the assessment of their work, and teaching scheduling. This means that the educators can now focus on what really matters, for example, patient care.

Customised learning

AI platforms have the power to adapt content to the learners’ ability . For instance, as demonstrated in my introduction, clinical educators can create learning materials according to each learner’s needs. Therefore, surgeons can be taught at their pace and in a manner in which they are comfortable.

Improved feedback

It could be argued that AI could improve the quality of the feedback that medical educators give to their learners. This could be achieved by AI platforms that are capable of reading learners’ work and determining the right and customised response that the medical educators can tailor according to the learner’s needs. This would obviously help with helping the medical professionals to improve their clinical decision-making.

Teaching materials

It used to take hours for medical educators to create training materials which were engaging and innovative. With AI, this process could take only minutes to create, for example, case studies , simulate medical procedures, or provide books or literature that the learners can read.

Focus on mentorship

As medical educators would save a significant amount of time  by using automated processes , they can use free times  for things like continuous professional development of the learners and mentoring them. Despite the value that AI brings into clinical education , the human-centric aspects such as  coaching  and mentoring will still be required .

What does this all mean to medical educators ?

The starting point for educators in clinical education needs to engaged and not passive in how they use AI in their work. Educators can identify in which areas of their educational practice that they would like to use AI. For example, this could be in feedback, assessment or simulation  and find which  AI too may be used to transform and shape these areas of their practice.

The key to remember is that AI does not replace the work of the clinical educators. Rather it enhances how the medical educators teach medical students.