Implications of artificial intelligence for medical education

Although digital health has occasioned huge changes for medicine, the issues it provokes have yet to be integrated into teaching and learning across the medical education continuum. This question is all the more pressing given that the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, discussed here as a specific example of healthcare’s digitalisation, are associated with a fundamental paradigm shift in teaching. Whereas 20th-century medical education models relied on experimental results evolving into a recognised standard that then informed textbook teaching, today this sequencing no longer holds. The speed at which new health AI technologies are developing, being introduced into clinical practice, and being used by patients requires equipping doctors to deal appropriately with experimental techniques that have not yet become part of a generally accepted body of knowledge. Agile teaching and educated guesswork about which treatments will benefit patients the most are crucial for enabling physicians to lead the introduction of such technologies without simply being forced to react to them.

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