AI tutor outperforms human experts in training medical students to remove brain tumours

Medical students aided by an AI tutor outperformed peers taught remotely by human experts in a complicated surgical training procedure, new research reports.

The Neurosurgical Simulation and Artificial Intelligence Learning Centre in Montreal, Canada, randomly assigned 70 students feedback and assistance from either a sophisticated AI system, a remote expert human instructor, or neither, while they removed virtual brain tumours using a neurosurgical simulator.

The AI system, called the Virtual Operative Assistant (VOA), delivered personalised feedback to its students via a machine learning algorithm to teach them safe surgical techniques.

Human instructors observed the students over a live feed and gave instructions based on their performance.

The students tutored by the AI system learned surgical skills 2.6 times faster and performed 36 per cent better than those advised by human experts, without experiencing the heightened stress the researchers had anticipated.

Using AI training models to tutor students could be an effective way to improve their skills and patient safety while reducing the burdens placed on human instructors, the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found.

“Artificially intelligent tutors like the VOA may become a valuable tool in the training of the next generation of neurosurgeons,” said Dr Rolando Del Maestro, the study’s senior author.

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Source: iNews, 22 February 2022