The role of AI and humanics in training healthcare professionals

Can an AI-powered hologram become a university professor, president or provost? Are we really headed down a road where an AI revolution makes humans obsolete and replaceable? These questions are on the minds of people on college and university campuses everywhere, with many recent articles citing a dramatic rise in AI anxiety in higher education.

At a recent international healthcare conference, I had the privilege of sharing a presentation with noted digital health advocate Stephen Klasko, in which he created a "time machine" to envision a return from 2035 and predict what the future of healthcare had become.

During our presentation, he conducted an interview with his future self, or at least a 3-dimensional, life-sized, AI-powered avatar of himself. Thanks to some technology wizardry, Dr. Klasko's life-sized avatar could answer prompts and draw compelling answers from a language model. The avatar even responded when asked to tell a healthcare joke to the audience: Why do physicians carry red pens? In case they're asked to draw blood. The interaction sparked amazement among the audience but prompted a serious, imposing question: What does it mean to be human?

Does interaction with an AI-powered hologram mean such technology can begin to replace clinicians at a patient's bedside? Can it serve as a replacement to speak to a family member or loved one of someone who has passed away? Or do the signs and signals we are observing from a tech-obsessed culture tell us something?

The human element in healthcare training

We've established a culture and society that has become obsessed with instant connection through technology. As a result, we have seen a commensurate crisis arise around loneliness, isolation, depression and anxiety. Despite instant access to others via text message, FaceTime, Snapchat, TikTok and abundant ubiquitous technology, we are seeing more people suffering the crisis of feeling alone.

Michael Avaltroni

At Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU), we believe these signals tell us a great deal about where the future leads. As human beings, we are wired to connect with others. We crave conversation, human touch, contact and relationship. As my institution pivots to focus on health, health-adjacent and professionally focused programs, it is incumbent upon us not just to educate proficient clinicians but to train a generational healthcare workforce that understands the need to be powered by technology while grounded in humanity.

Preparing students for the future

As we consider the increasing use and amazing applications of AI, advanced technology and rapid innovation in transforming healthcare, we fully believe in the necessity of preparing our students to use these technologies by learning three key pillars of literacy: technological literacy, data literacy and human literacy.

The university of the future must redefine higher education around a new and necessary purpose: to educate for capability, connection and human-centered design.

At the core is an integration of humanics -- often described as the study, understanding and development of key human qualities -- as a novel way to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in education, technology and the human component in an AI-driven world. It speaks to the urgency of building healthcare teams that optimize all the advances in AI with the humans in the middle -- our students, clinicians and patients.

By rethinking healthcare education and embedding humanics across our programs, we're working to ensure our healthcare students graduate with both the technical mastery to use the tools of modern medicine and the human capacity to see, hear and care for the person in front of them. The future of healthcare will be shaped by our ability to innovate, but also to stay well-grounded in human connections.

Pillars of humanics

At FDU, we are focusing on the five pillars of humanics: empathy, agility, cultural competence, creativity and critical thinking. Fueling our efforts is the creation of our Humanics Living Laboratory and the Humanics Innovation Challenge Fund -- a multidisciplinary program to develop "human AI translators" that merge intellect, emotion and algorithms.

The opportunity to redefine higher education in the age of AI is upon us.

We are creating a future that incorporates the critical, human-centered values that lead to whole-person care. The goal is not to teach around AI, but rather to teach through AI to elevate human work and embed the value of human connection into the heart of healthcare.

With this foundational work, we believe we are poised to not only reimagine education but also create the campus of the future. We envision a place where traditional-path students live and learn alongside seniors in university-based retirement communities; where early career healthcare workers live as neighbors to families and college-aged students; and, most importantly, where the integration of whole-person health becomes the guidepost for new ideas, innovative advances and the purposeful work of building a community that delivers on the promise of integrating whole-person health and well-being throughout the living environment.

The opportunity to redefine higher education in the age of AI is upon us. Rather than thinking about ways to replace the president and provost with AI bots, we believe the future brings about the opportunity to create a new generation of learners who are preparing to be uniquely human in a technology-advancing world. With this goal in mind, we need to not fear being replaced by technology but rather be empowered by our ability to use it alongside our humanity and change the world.

Michael Avaltroni is the president of Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.