To prepare tomorrow’s doctors for evidence-based medicine, instruct today’s med students in dHealth and AI

Medical students are broadly familiar with digital health technologies and, relatedly, believe AI will play a crucial role in the future of medicine. 

However, their hands-on experience with dHealth is limited—and their initial readiness for real-world medicine is significantly tied to two factors. These are a.) their comfort level with the constituent parts of evidence-based medicine and b.) their perceptions of AI’s burgeoning importance to healthcare.

These are among the key findings of researchers who surveyed 1,400 medical students at the University of Montreal’s medical school. 

After analyzing 177 of the responses, the team concluded that North American medical education is due for a redesign. To adequately prepare up-and-coming generations of physicians for modern practice, the authors suggest, curriculums need to combine immersion in evidence-based medicine with a deep dive into AI. 

The study report posted Jan. 31 in Medical Education Online. Senior author is IT professor Guy Paré, PhD, of the University of Montreal. Corresponding author is business informatics professor Gerit Wagner, PhD, of the University of Bamberg in Germany. 

Here are seven key conclusions the authors lay out in their discussion section. 

1. Competencies and perceptions of dHealth and AI technologies are positively related to medical students’ behaviors around evidence-based medicine. 

‘This insight is valuable for medical practice, as it suggests potential synergies between advanced technologies and evidence-based medicine, and it highlights that different competencies can be taught within the medical curriculum.’

2. Experiential competencies have a significant positive effect, while knowledge competences are not significantly related to evidence-based medicine. 

‘Thus there is an essential difference between familiarizing medical students with concepts and giving them the opportunity to experiment with IT systems, telehealth applications, AI-related technologies and mobile medical apps.’

3. Individual backgrounds—particularly gender and academic level—significantly impact dHealth competencies, including both knowledge and experiential aspects. 

‘This highlights the necessity of integrating dHealth competencies into medical education and practice to accommodate varying individual backgrounds and technological advancements.’

4. Medical students’ dHealth competences and accurate perceptions of AI can make a positive contribution to their mastery of evidence-based medicine. 

‘This implies that strengthening education in the areas of dHealth and AI in medical curricula may simultaneously strengthen students’ evidence-based medicine and offer an effective basis for the technology-supported future of medicine.’

5. Experiential learning can prepare prospective physicians to effectively integrate advanced technologies into their practice, ultimately supporting the widespread adoption of evidence-based medicine.  

‘While prior research on medical education and AI has highlighted the need to go beyond traditional approaches of delivering teaching contents, it is evident that faculty members at medical schools need to acquire requisite dHealth competencies, e.g., through interdisciplinary initiatives, training or hiring.

6. It is advisable to cover fundamental dHealth technologies broadly instead of focusing on AI exclusively. 

‘This aligns with prior curriculum development efforts that situate AI contents as an advanced topic after covering basic data literacy or IT infrastructure topics.’

7. Propositions for medical curricula that emphasize the links between AI and evidence-based medicine have emerged in the scientific literature.  

‘Our findings thus constitute both a theoretical and an empirical foundation for such propositions, as evidence generation and evidence synthesis are increasingly enabled by AI and machine learning—and as AI becomes a mean for prospective physicians to overcome the barriers encountered in their learning and practice of evidence-based medicine.’

The study is available in full for free.