University of Cincinnati receives AMA grant to advance precision medical education

The University of Cincinnati College of Medicine has been selected as a recipient of an American Medical Association (AMA) grant to use artificial intelligence to advance physician training through personalized learning.

The college will receive a $1.1 million AMA Transforming Lifelong Learning Through Precision Education grant in the next four years to fund its project, "Ambient AI for precision feedback: Augmenting clinical reasoning and communication using real-time feedback".

The AMA chose 11 team recipients from among nearly 200 applicants. The College of Medicine distinguished itself as an innovator and leader in precision education, advancing efforts to strengthen the physician workforce and support high-quality patient care.

Precision education models use data and technology, including augmented intelligence, to tailor learning to each learner's needs. These models help medical students, residents and physicians focus on developing the skills and competencies that matter most in diagnosing, communicating with and caring for patients.

Medical trainees face insufficient high-quality feedback to inform their continued development in clinical settings. The College of Medicine's project will use data collected through systems and devices in their environment, like eyeglasses and smartphones, to capture interactions and provide personalized feedback on their clinical reasoning and communication skills, allowing trainees to refine how they connect with patients and think through complex diagnoses. 

To achieve this, UC investigators will extend use of their 2-Sigma AI platform, which has been providing on-demand, adaptive AI simulations to provide personalized learning experiences and feedback on clinical skills to medical students.

The grant's principal investigator Laurah Turner, PhD, and her team will develop AI algorithms for feedback delivery via smartphone app and through heads-up display in AI glasses, which will project crucial information in users' line of sight. The team will test it with approximately 600 trainees, both medical students and residents, at two sites. They then will scale from simulation to authentic patient encounters. 

"Just as data analytics transformed professional sports, precision education is poised to transform how we train physicians. Medical trainees spend thousands of hours in clinical settings but receive feedback on only a fraction of their patient encounters. We're moving to a model where every patient encounter becomes a learning opportunity. That's the promise of precision education," said Turner, the College of Medicine's associate dean of artificial intelligence and educational informatics.

"Being selected as a recipient of this grant is a significant milestone for the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine," said Gregory Postel, MD, dean of the College of Medicine, Christian R. Holmes professor, executive vice president for health affairs at UC and chair of the UC Health Board of Directors. "Dr. Laurah Turner's pioneering work with ambient AI represents the next frontier in medical training. By leveraging real-time data to deliver personalized feedback, we can optimize learning for our students and residents while ensuring the next generation of physicians is prepared to deliver high-quality, precision-based care to our patients and community."

The College of Medicine will collaborate with Arizona State University's School of Medicine and Medical Engineering and HonorHealth, a large health care system in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

UC's project directly advances the AMA's precision education goals through tech-enabled assessment, personalizing training experiences and deploying new learning models across undergraduate and graduate medical education.

"Technology and AI have the potential to reshape how physicians learn, practice and care for their patients, and these grants will help bring that potential to life," said AMA CEO John Whyte, MD. "As new tools emerge, we have an opportunity to build learning environments that are more engaging, more adaptable and better aligned with the realities of practicing medicine. Our goal is to ensure that innovation strengthens the physician experience and creates a future where every physician is fully equipped to meet the needs of patients."

The AMA's $12 million investment will expand access to cutting-edge technology and systems that make learning more efficient, effective, and focused on optimal patient care. The Transforming Lifelong Learning Through Precision Education Grant Program was developed with national experts in augmented intelligence, assessment and medical education and follows more than a decade of AMA leadership through its ChangeMedEd^® Initiative, which has invested nearly $50 million in reimagining medical education.