Leveraging AI to enhance future physician training

Doctors listen to their patients for an average of 11 seconds before interrupting them and 36% fail to ask or state the patient’s reason for the visit, according to a widely publicized 2019 study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Changing the sobering statistics means educating future physicians in the art of the medical interview, a training process that educators at the University of Arizona Health Sciences believe can be improved with artificial intelligence.

“AIMHEI represents a step big forward in our medical education, utilizing the power of artificial intelligence to coach and evaluate medical students in a way that was previously unimaginable,” said Allan Hamilton, MD, executive director of the UArizona Health Sciences Arizona Simulation Technology and Education Center and a Regents Professor of surgery at the UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson. “We hope it will function as the ultimate coaching tool because it not only streamlines the coaching of the medical interviewing process, but also makes it uniquely personalized for each student while saving valuable time for both faculty and students. It offers individualized coaching with targeted feedback, allowing students to refine their medical interview skills with precision.”

The Artificially Intelligent Medical History Evaluation Instrument, or AIMHEI, is being developed to optimize the doctor-patient medical interview experience by providing personalized coaching and feedback to medical students. AIMHEI generates detailed assessments of students’ interpersonal and medical content skills based on guidelines for physical exams and medical history established by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the American College of Surgeons and the World Health Organization.