Algorithm as Medical Teacher: AI and the Future of Medical Teaching
Pushparaj Shetty *1, Jeevan Divakaran 2, Ila Chauhan 3
1. Associate Professor, Department of Anatomy, Trinity School of Medicine, St. Vincent
2. Professor, Department of Pathology, Medical University of the Americas, Nevis
3. Professor and Chair, Department of Clinical Skills, Medical University of the Americas, Nevis.
*Correspondence to: Pushparaj Shetty. Associate Professor, Department of Anatomy, Trinity School of Medicine, St. Vincent.
Copyright
© 2026 Pushparaj Shetty. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Received: 15 April 2026
Published: 12 May 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20131976
Abstract
Background: For generations, the medical educator has stood at the center of a complex professional role — transmitting knowledge, building clinical skills, shaping professional identity, and mentoring the next generation of physicians. Artificial intelligence (AI) is now advancing at a pace that challenges each of these functions in concrete, evidenced ways, and not merely at the margins.
Aim: This perspective article examines how AI will, within three to five years, take on the core functions of the medical educator — drawing on current trial data, deployed technologies, and emerging educational frameworks rather than speculation.
Key Arguments: We work through six domains of a medical educator functions: personalized knowledge instruction, clinical simulation and skills training, assessment and feedback, curriculum design, mentorship and pastoral support, and professional identity formation. For each, we describe how AI is already performing or closely approximating these roles, and where the human educator remains irreplaceable.
Conclusion: The pressing question is no longer whether AI can do much of what a medical educator does — the evidence suggests it can. The real question is how institutions govern this shift without sacrificing the humanistic values that medicine depends on.
Keywords: artificial intelligence; medical education; large language models; AI tutoring; clinical simulation; assessment; curriculum design; medical educator role.
Introduction