AI Medical School Tutor: Modelling and Implementation

Shazia Afzal, Tejas Indulal Dhamecha, Paul Gagnon, Akash Nayak, Ayush Shah, Jan Carlstedt-Duke, Smriti Pathak, Sneha Mondal, Akshay Gugnani, Nabil Zary, Malolan Chetlur*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper we present our experience in the design, modelling, implementation and evaluation of a conversational medical school tutor (MST), employing AI on the cloud. MST combines case-based tutoring with competency based curriculum review, using a natural language interface to enable an adaptive and rich learning experience. It is designed both to engage and tutor medical students through Digital Virtual Patient (DVP) interactions built around clinical reasoning activities and their application of foundational knowledge. DVPs in MST are realistic clinical cases authored by subject matter experts in natural language text. The context of each clinical case is modelled as a set of complex concepts with their associated attributes and synonyms using the UMLS ontology. The MST conversational engine understands the intent of the user’s natural language inputs by training Watson Assistant service and drives a meaningful dialogue relevant to the clinical case under investigation. The curriculum content is analysed using NLP techniques and represented as a related and cohesive graph with concepts as its nodes. The runtime application is modelled as a dynamic and adaptive flow between the case and student characteristics. We describe in detail the various challenges encountered in the design and implementation of this intelligent tutor and also present evaluation of the tutor through two field trials with third and fourth year students comprising of 90 medical students.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationArtificial Intelligence in Medicine - 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, AIME 2020, Proceedings
EditorsMartin Michalowski, Robert Moskovitch
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages133-145
Number of pages13
ISBN (Print)9783030591366
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020
Externally publishedYes
Event18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, AIME 2020 - Minneapolis, United States
Duration: 25 Aug 202028 Aug 2020

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume12299 LNAI
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, AIME 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMinneapolis
Period25/08/2028/08/20

Keywords

  • Case-based tutoring
  • Digital virtual patient
  • Natural language interface

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