JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are becoming increasingly relevant in everyday clinical practice, with FDA-approved AI solutions now available in many specialties. This development has far-reaching implications for doctors and the future medical profession, highlighting the need for both practicing physicians and medical students to acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to effectively and differentiatedly use and evaluate these technologies. Currently, however, there is limited experience with AI-focused curricular training and continuing education.

Objective:

This paper introduces a novel competency-based curriculum designed to teach AI concepts to medical students in Germany during their clinical years. It employs a multidimensional qualitative evaluation to assess how this curriculum enhances students' competencies in AI.

Methods:

After completing the course, participants were interviewed using semi-structured group interviews. A subset of questions focused on their knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding AI in medical practice. Responses were analyzed using Mayring’s qualitative content analysis. The interview guide and the main categories were developed deductively from existing evidence and research questions compiled by our group prior to the interview phase. Subcategories where then developed inductively from the interview analysis. This paper reports on the findings reglated to students’ perception and attitudes towards AI.

Results:

We conducted a total of 18 interviews, in which all 35/35 (100%) participants (female=11, male=24) from three consequitive course runs participated. This produced a total of 214 statements on AI, which were assigned to the three main categories "Areas of application", "Future work" and "Critical reflection". The findings indicate that students have a nuanced and differentiated understanding of AI and a high level of acceptance of the teaching concept. All 35/35 students would recommend the curriculum to peers.

Conclusions:

The evaluation demonstrated that the curriculum effectively increases competence, fosters a critical perspective on AI, and prepares medical students to engage with the technology in a differentiated manner. The curriculum is feasible, beneficial, and highly-accepted among students, suggesting it could serve as a teaching model for other medical institutions. Given the growing number and impact of medical AI applications in clinical settings, there is a pressing need for more AI-focused curricula and further research on their educational impact.