Medical schools of South Asian countries need to incorporate artificial intelligence-powered chatbots in existing undergraduate medical curricula

Abstract

Chatbots are computer programs using artificial intelligence (AI) and natural-language processing (NLP) models pre-trained on precise data to understand the wide range of questions/queries and automate responses to them, mimicking human conversation.[1,2] One has to understand “how to use Chatbot.” Start a session by entering a question/query or specific task (simply it is called as a prompt) in a chat interface; chatbot presents a natural-language “reply,” within seconds pertinent to the prompt entered. This interaction of prompts and replies sustains during the session, appears to be a conversation among two persons.[2] Large language models (LLM) Chatbot tools have been developing at a very fast pace, for example, Chat-GPT, Bard, Hugging-Chat, Bing AI, Sparrow, and YouChat, to name just a few. These are used for all purposes.[3] ChatGPT, a fastest-growing AI-powered internet tool has continuously been studied for its utility in medical and clinical education and related research.[4] Studies have documented that ChatGPT could respond to a variety of queries with acceptable accuracy and relevance. The latest version of ChatGPT-4 has more potent image processing potentials too.[5] Though ChatGPT works remarkably at the outset, even trivial errors specifically in the clinical judgment may produce adverse outcomes.[6] Med-PaLM, a Google’s medicine-specific LLM chatbot responses queries, produces text, translates languages, and composes diverse types of content but still faces issue of accuracies.[7] The accuracy will be enhanced with newer, advanced, and specific versions of chatbots having more specific datasets.[5] Medical students and faculty have already started using chatbots; the major challenge to medical schools is to develop academic standards if learners use chatbots for solving assignments etc. related to their academic work.[4] Medical educators have not to treat the use of chatbot as a threat to medical education, but consider it as an opportunity and adapt and modify their teaching and assessment strategies to the benefits of the students and discourage its deceitful use.[8] Learners must be taught how to develop the most suitable prompts to get accurate and relevant responses and trained to work at a higher cognitive level earlier than they are educated now. They should also be coached to interpret the responses aptly and sensibly and use them rationally.[9] Accuracy in the context of history taking and its interpretation and physical examination findings limits the use of chatbots as these tasks best be performed by trained and skilled doctors. Also, medical students have to understand that Chatbot cannot imitate a person and substitute human in the assignments which need human to human empathy, judgment, and decision-making.[10]; the use of chatbots will enable students to increase their health and medical-related skills through flexible learning. Most likely students and faculty in South Asian countries too have started using Chatbots; at this point in time it is difficult to say about their purpose of accessing Chatbots. But the medical schools in South Asia have to confront with many challenges in incorporating chatbots as a teaching/learning tools in their existing curricula: (1) training faculty to facilitate students use chatbots properly and ethically; (2) teaching students how to utilize chatbots for their learning, doing medicine practice and adapt according to advancement in chabots technology and tools; (3) examine the potential benefits and limitations of the use of chatbots in medical education; (4) what type of assessment needs to be used; (5) how to cope with emerging ethical and professional concerns; (6) what could be the role of stakeholders involved in medical education; and (7) strategies for integrating chatbots in curricula. It is obvious that Chatbots have to play a vital role in transforming medical education and research and improving quality of healthcare and its delivery. These will become an integral part of medical curricula. Furthermore, AI-powered chatbots have to stay here and will have a long-lasting impact on medical education and healthcare. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.

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