Self-described “AI enthusiast” Ravi David Yarid, DO, has been actively thinking about the use of artificial intelligence in medical education since his own days as a med student.
However, it wasn’t until the recent breakout of generative AI that Yarid refocused his efforts on what had been more of a background effort.
“Everyone started talking about it,” he said. “I just dove in. This was happening and finally there was enough public awareness that we can do something with it.”
Yarid, an assistant professor of osteopathic manipulative medicine at PCOM Georgia, has seized the opportunity to take his passion for AI and apply it to improving the educational experience—and outcomes—for students in the Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) program.
“If we start utilizing this in ways to improve our ability to educate, the sky's the limit,” he said.
Yarid hopes to launch a formal pilot research project—the first of its kind at PCOM—designed to study how artificial intelligence can help medical students. The focus of the proposed research will center around AI assistance in student studying.
Yarid expects to get exponentially more data than they have ever been able to accumulate in educational research of this nature.
“We’re going to have the ability to start analyzing data in ways we’ve never had access to previously, in real-time,” he said.
This type of research, Yarid explained, will ultimately make it possible for medical schools to shift to metrics of continuous evaluation as opposed to metrics of intermittent examination.
“Medical schools tend to evaluate themselves most heavily on their student board pass rate or their board scores,” he said.
Test-taking skills, he argued, do not necessarily make a good physician or a good healer.
So how do you change a system that places a strong emphasis on test success?
The answer, according to Yarid, may be doing away with many of the ways we test altogether.
“AI allows us to have persistent and consistent objective feedback about where students are and where they're going,” he said. “If you have a 99% level of confidence that you're going to do 90% or better on your test, what’s the point of the test?”
The same, he predicted, may become true of board exams.
“If we can prove that AI can confidently sustain you—it will know when you're ready to go on rotations, when you're done with rotations—it will be able to assist you in your own path to maximize your performance, [then] our current metrics of excellence will become closer to our new metrics of basic competency,” Yarid said.
For now though, board exams must be mastered and Yarid expects to see major changes within a couple of years.
“I submit that through the use of AI we will be able to have our students all board-ready, board prepped with 100% pass rate. I also believe this will help the washout rate,” he said. “We won't have students needing to repeat years or dropping out.”
Through the use of AI-enhanced learning, Yarid sees an educational evolution in which learning paths become more fluid—beginning well before medical school.
“It starts learning your individual learning patterns. It starts filtering the information,” he said.
AI-enhanced learning, Yarid predicts, will objectively measure the student’s progress and adjust as needed to either speed through a topic or slow down to reinforce concepts as needed. Each learner will have a unique educational fingerprint.
That data could then be used to help students determine which medical schools might be a good fit for their style of learning. Yarid also expects it will help medical schools develop better applicant pools by making medical education accessible to all types of learners—not just those who test well.
“Everyone's going to be able to come into medical school and have an entire path that's uniquely their own,” he said.
Faculty will then be able to focus on training students to become providers instead of having to focus on training students to pass boards.
“We'll have a sea of metrics by which we're going to be able to maintain an eye on all of our students that is so far beyond the idea of current models. These models of the medical education system, Yarid said, are barely different than when he attended medical school 27 years ago. His vision is to see it evolve in a way that will create a more diverse physician workforce.
“We currently are limited to those that can handle the intellectual onslaught in mental memorization for two years straight,” he explained. “AI can assist that learning so we don't only appeal to those students, but others who are heart first,” those who may not have the mental training currently needed to be successful. Yarid believes AI can help those students succeed in medical school.
Yarid’s vision is to position PCOM as the leader in AI not just in osteopathic education but in education as a whole, as well as in the healthcare space.
“We’re going to lead. Innovate. Create. Be an authority,” he said.
“There's nothing that's going to have as meaningful an impact as this does,” he said. “If I’m not working on this, I’m doing PCOM students a disservice. I’m doing myself a disservice. I’m doing PCOM faculty a disservice. I’m doing our future patients a disservice—humanity a disservice. This is important.”
© 2024 Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine