USING AI TO PRESCRIBE MEDICINE
The school will also use artificial intelligence to help the next batch of final-year students to learn how to accurately prescribe medication.
The simulator closely resembles the prescription system at hospitals.
The Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine said it can prescribe medication with an accuracy of up to 99 per cent.
Professor Tham Kum Ying, assistant dean of Year 5 students at the medical school, said the previous prescription training system required “a strictly exact-word matching that the students have keyed in” before they will be given the correct answer. Students have to ensure they pick the right drugs for a patient, with the right dosage and frequency.
“Sometimes spelling mistakes happen, which we can correct. But in terms of the dosage, we do have some flexibility,” she said, adding that marking a student’s work is now more reliable.
“In real life, prescribing for a patient, there could be two ways that are both equally right to prescribe. But in the previous model of marking, that is not acceptable.”
AI allows the boundaries of the acceptable and correct prescription to be redrawn by the students, said Prof Tham.
“It really gives very good feedback because it’s almost immediate. And the students begin to realise that both ways of prescribing are correct, and they don’t get hung up that there’s only one correct way of doing things,” she added.
“So it is much more like the way we work in real life.”