Actionable companion · Feedback & scaffolding

Learning with agency: Artificial Intelligence–Powered Training Database for Clinical Thinking: App Development Study

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide, separate from the original research. Proposed actions are not claims or recommendations attributed to the source authors. No independent peer review of this guide is asserted.

Evidence and context

Title and abstract screening; stage labels describe reported settings, not verified numerical ages. Design labels require full-text appraisal. Reported stage(s): Higher education. Health-professions learning must be distinguished from K–12 instruction.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the linked source license:

Abstract Background With the development of artificial intelligence (AI), medicine has entered the era of intelligent medicine, and various aspects, such as medical education and talent cultivation, are also being redefined. The cultivation of clinical thinking abilities poses a formidable challenge even for seasoned clinical educators, as offline training modalities often fall short in bridging the divide between current practice and the desired ideal. Consequently, there arises an imperative need for the expeditious development of a web-based database, tailored to empower physicians in their quest to learn and hone their clinical reasoning skills. Objective This study aimed to introduce an app named “XueYiKu,” which includes consultations, physical examinations, auxiliary examinations, and diagnosis, incorporating AI and actual complete hospital medical records to build an online-learning platform using human-computer interaction. Methods The “XueYiKu” app was designed as a contactless, self-service, trial-and-error system application based on actual complete hospital medical records and natural language processing technology to comprehensively assess the “clinical competence” of residents at different stages. Case extraction was performed at a hospital’s case data center, and the best-matching cases were differentiated through natural language processing, word segmentation, synonym conversion, and sorting. More than 400 teaching cases covering 65 kinds of diseases were released for students to learn, and the subjects covered internal medicine, surgery, gynecology and obstetrics, and pediatrics. The difficulty of learning cases was divided into four levels in ascending order. Moreover, the learning and teaching effects were evaluated using 6 dimensions covering systematicness, agility, logic, knowledge expansion, multidimensional evaluation indicators, and preciseness. Results From the app’s first launch on the Android platform in May 2019 to the last version updated in May 2023, the total number of teacher and student users was 6209 and 1180, respectively. The top 3 subjects most frequently learned were respirology (n=606, 24.1%), general surgery (n=506, 20.1%), and urinary surgery (n=390, 15.5%). For diseases, pneumonia was the most frequently learned, followed by cholecystolithiasis (n=216, 14.1%), benign prostate hyperplasia (n=196, 12.8%), and bladder tumor (n=193, 12.6%). Among 479 students, roughly a third (n=168, 35.1%) scored in the 60 to 80 range, and half of them scored over 80 points (n=238, 49.7%). The app enabled medical students’ learning to become more active and self-motivated, with a variety of formats, and provided real-time feedback through assessments on the platform. The learning effect was satisfactory overall and provided important precedence for establishing scientific models and methods for assessing clinical thinking skills in the future. Conclusions The integration of AI and medical education will undoubtedly assist in the restructuring of education processes; promote the evolution of the education ecosystem; and provide new convenient ways for independent learning, interactive communication, and educational resource sharing.

A 90-day district pilot

1. Days 1–15 · Appraise. Have the curriculum lead and a teacher read the methods and limitations. Record the study design, sample, comparator, outcomes and evidence gaps. Define a local question that the study can help inform.
2. Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one disciplinary task. Require a first attempt, a documented AI consultation, a critique of the output and an independent explanation. Align the comparison group and scoring rubric with the same objective. Name an accountable owner and set the baseline, success threshold and budget before implementation.
3. Days 31–60 · Test. Start with a small voluntary cohort, preserve an accessible non-AI route and require teacher review. Use synthetic or de-identified examples; approve data handling and tool terms through district processes.
4. Days 61–90 · Decide. Blind-score reasoning and accuracy on a new task without AI. Distinguish model examination scores, student perceptions and actual learner gains; only the last directly tests educational benefit. Compare with baseline, document uncertainty and stop or revise if learning worsens, access is unequal or critical errors persist.

The board decision brief

Report the learning problem, evidence quality, participating population, total cost including review time, measured benefit, errors, access differences and remaining uncertainties. Make a dated recommendation to stop, revise or expand. A positive perception survey alone does not establish learning improvement.

Attribution and reuse

Heng Wang; Danni Zheng; Mengying Wang; Hong Ji; Jiangli Han; Yan Wang; Ning Shen; Jie Qiao. Artificial Intelligence–Powered Training Database for Clinical Thinking: App Development Study. JMIR Formative Research (2025-01-03). https://doi.org/10.2196/58426

Companion prepared 2026-10-30. Original authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract is an attributed source extract; the implementation plan is new AI-assisted editorial material, offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license. This guide has not undergone independent peer review.