Hawaiʻi's medical school is one of 11 teams across the country to receive a $1.1 million grant for advancing education with artificial intelligence.
The funding comes from the American Medical Association as part of its national “Transforming Lifelong Learning Through Precision Education” grant program.
The John A. Burns School of Medicine plans to use the money to develop AI systems to have a humanistic approach when teaching medical students about rural health.
The project’s description states that it will “develop an AI-enhanced, culturally responsive precision education and precision coaching program to train medical students for practice in these communities.”
Dr. Kanoho Hosoda, the director of the Native Hawaiian Center of Excellence at JABSOM, will be the lead investigator on the project. She said the main goal is to speak with successful Hawaiʻi-based physicians, most of whom have graduated from JABSOM, to hear how they succeeded in providing a high level of care in their specialty.
“The bare bones of what we're trying to do is get these stories and these pathways of these successful physicians and have them just tell their story, capturing that as ‘data’ and taking that information and putting it into this model,” Hosoda said.
Hosoda explained that the AI system is meant to create efficiency in places that often take up a lot of energy and time, like data collection and organization. She said the objective is to drive humanism and connection, rather than replacing it.
The project, titled “Developing culturally responsive AI for rural health: Utilizing precision education and precision coaching to strengthen Hawaiʻi's rural physician workforce,” will receive the grant money over the next four years. Hosoda says the first chunk will be used to develop the AI model and to eventually introduce the first cohort of medical students to the research.
Hosoda hopes this grant will also help target the continuous, and worsening, physician shortage in the state. She said this is not unique to Hawaiʻi and hopes this system will model ways that other states can offset the physician turnover rate.
“Ours is really a tester – it's a pilot study of, ‘how do you get these human values into the coding and the DNA of artificial intelligence?’” Hosoda said.
“We don't want this constant churn of one to three years and then you're out. We want somebody who's going to stay there and be a part of the community and uplift it, not just as a physician in the hospital setting, but also as a contributing community member.”
The research team will meet with the 10 other grantees on a monthly basis to check in on strategy, progress, and obstacles.
“I really see this project amplifying the voices of Hawaiʻi, especially those of our neighbor island communities, and showing what attributes people align with in those areas,” Hosoda said. “So it's not just artificial intelligence, but uplifting human values, which includes Hawaiian values and culture. So it's bringing it all together.”
