I recently came across this interesting article:
Artificial intelligence in healthcare: Should it be included in the medical curriculum? A students’ perspective
The authors discuss how the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly growing in medicine, as in all fields. While AI is around 65 years old now, it is paradoxically still in its infancy in academics, and if anything, still more in medicine. They have discussed the need to introduce the knowledge of AI in the medical curriculum right from the Undergraduate days. They explain it with an incident of how one of the authors – a UG student – with his batchmates were asked to diagnose if a breast lump in a lady was malignant or benign. They felt that it was a Grade 3 tumor, based on mammography reports. Then their Professor explained how AI could help in improving the accuracy of the diagnosis.
Next the authors the obstacles of including AI in the curriculum and also their recommendations. These include a brief orientation in the I MBBS Foundation Course, more learning in the next three years and opportunities to research on the topic and more
These are important suggestions and we guess they will happen in the coming years.
I cannot resist stressing that on the same note – it is high time that Literature Searching & Referencing were introduced in the curriculum – the lack of these skills is resulting in lots of time being wasted, and I suspect very often – in publications that have some lacuna thanks to the inadequate research from the literature. I stress harder – that introduction in the curriculum is not about these courses being counted for exams, grades and the degree (though that should happen later on) – but it is all about giving students the opportunity to learn these skills in their UG days – at their own pace. It is just an investment of about a few days
In fact many such extra courses should be encouraged and offered to students, to learn at their pace during their UG phase. Several students do lot more than just study their text books. Why not let them have these opportunities and guidance from their college itself?
Article citation: Bansal M, Jindal A. Artificial intelligence in healthcare: Should it be included in the medical curriculum? A students’ perspective. Natl Med J India. 2022;35(1):56-58.
Full text: doi: 10.25259/NMJI_208_20.
PubMed – PMID: 36039630.
