To alleviate the administrative burden of healthcare professionals, which in some cases takes up more than a quarter of working time, generative AI solutions, such as AI chatbots based on large language models (large language models or LLMs), are being looked at. To use this technology in the best and most optimal way, it is important that healthcare professionals have the necessary knowledge. The Duthc LUMC is now the first medical school in the Netherlands to start AI language model programming internships for medical students, among others.
Several generative AI solutions are already available for automating administrative tasks such as working out and typing interview reports. Solutions that can save healthcare professionals several hours a week. Time they can then use for their primary task: caring for patients.
LLM programming knowledge
The number of hours researchers spend on administrative tasks is usually much higher still. When a study requires data collection from hundreds or many thousands of patient records, we are soon talking about many hundreds of hours. It is precisely for these tasks that LLM-based AI solutions could be put to good use. For this, however, the physician-researcher will have to have the right programming knowledge.
So that is why LUMC has now started programming internships for medical students so they can gain the necessary knowledge and expertise to work with, and program, LLMs. ‘If more doctors have experience in programming, they can also use that knowledge to reduce the bulk of administration. You don't necessarily have to program yourself then, but it can already have a big impact if you know how programming with language works. That expertise, there is now no way for how a doctor of the future or a medical student can achieve that,’ said Dr Julius Heemelaar, postdoctoral researcher and doctor in training as a specialist in cardiology).
Practical internship
During the internship, students learn the basics of programming and machine learning and apply them directly in their own project within a safe, protected environment. Six students are currently on internships, five at LUMC and one at OLVG in Amsterdam. Eventually, the desire is for departments to adopt the tools. One of them, Marit Hamer, says: ‘I missed education on artificial intelligence in my studies. With my internship, I am mastering the basics of programming. It is very much puzzling and trying, trial and error, but in the end you always get a step further.’
‘The goal is for the students to be able to program themselves. Most have no programming experience, so they get a familiarisation programme. In it, they get the basics of machine-learning principles,’ Hameleers adds.
