Leveraging Datathons to Teach AI in Undergraduate Medical Education: Case Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: As artificial intelligence and machine learning become increasingly influential in clinical practice, it is critical for future physicians to understand how such novel technologies will impact the delivery of patient care. Objective: We describe 2 trainee-led, multi-institutional datathons as an effective means of teaching key data science and machine learning skills to medical trainees. We offer key insights on the practical implementation of such datathons and analyze experiences gained and lessons learned for future datathon initiatives. Methods: We detail 2 recent datathons organized by MDplus, a national trainee-led nonprofit organization. To assess the efficacy of the datathon as an educational experience, an opt-in postdatathon survey was sent to all registered participants. Survey responses were deidentified and anonymized before downstream analysis to assess the quality of datathon experiences and areas for future work. Results: Our digital datathons between 2023 and 2024 were attended by approximately 200 medical trainees across the United States. A diverse array of medical specialty interests was represented among participants, with 43% (21/49) of survey participants expressing an interest in internal medicine, 35% (17/49) in surgery, and 22% (11/49) in radiology. Participant skills in leveraging Python for analyzing medical datasets improved after the datathon, and survey respondents enjoyed participating in the datathon. Conclusions: The datathon proved to be an effective and cost-effective means of providing medical trainees the opportunity to collaborate on data-driven projects in health care. Participants agreed that datathons improved their ability to generate clinically meaningful insights from data. Our results suggest that datathons can serve as valuable and effective educational experiences for medical trainees to become better skilled in leveraging data science and artificial intelligence for patient care.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".