Technological Solutions to Med Ed Challenges Workshopped at Yale Ideathon

“Fast Formative Feedback.” That was the branding for a proposed technological solution to a problem that Ada Fenick, MD, professor of pediatrics (general pediatrics), raised about clinical formative feedback at the inaugural "Ideathon," organized by the Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and Yale Health Sciences IT (HSIT) Educational Technology & Innovation (ETI) team. Clinical formative feedback was one of seven medical education-related challenges discussed at the Ideathon. The half-day event on March 28, 2025, was held in the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library (CWML) team-based learning classroom.

While the majority of the 43 Ideathon participants were YSM faculty—from numerous departments—the attendees reflected the breadth of the YSM community, including MD and MD-PhD students, residents, fellows, post-docs, and staff. A few colleagues from HSIT and the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning also participated. Fenick explained that she signed up for the Ideathon “because I’m both nervous and excited about the possibilities of AI. I wanted to see what I could learn from the different teams and how they were thinking about harnessing its power for medical education.”

At the end of the Ideathon, Emergency Medicine (EM) Resident Michael Makutonin, MD, and Instructor of EM and Assistant Director in the Yale Center for Healthcare Simulation Lisa Zhang, MD—representing a six-person team, which included Fenick—presented the proposed Fast Formative Feedback solution, using a polished five-slide presentation. Makutonin and Zhang first expanded upon the significance of the problem: while clinical formative feedback is critical for improving clinical care, it is work-intensive for the evaluator, and often not recognized or remembered by trainees. Their team’s proposed solution was to use an existing resource— Abridge’s transcript ability to capture a case presentation with feedback interspersed—and build an application programming interface (API) on top of it which, using artificial intelligence (AI), would identify each trainee individually and synthesize the feedback provided to them. The evaluator would review the individualized AI feedback summary, before sending it to each trainee.

In opening remarks, Jaideep Talwalkar, MD, the inaugural associate dean for educational technology & innovation, shared his excitement for being in academic medicine during this time of technological transformation. His ETI co-chair, Kathleen Omollo, director of health IT strategy & portfolio, told the participants that ETI hoped the Ideathon would help them understand the YSM community’s interests and needs, raise awareness of opportunities and identify feasible solutions, foster a culture of innovation in the medical education space, and introduce ETI capabilities and common design frameworks. Omollo also shared ETI’s mission: to leverage advanced technology and data-driven insights to enhance undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education, and to collaborate to drive impactful change, supporting excellence in health professions education through expert consultation and innovative solutions. (Associate Director Gary Leydon, Project Manager Kyrie Perry, and Business Analyst Ye Xu, PhD, comprise the rest of the ETI team.)

Prior to the event, registrants were invited to propose a medical education-related design challenge to be workshopped. The organizers selected seven of the 20 submissions, including Fenick’s, which were presented near the beginning of the Ideathon. The other six selected topics focused on AI-simulated patients, practical exam prep, surgical anatomy Augmented Reality (AR), a personalized tutor, a 3D spine model, and a clinical reasoning companion. Each presenter had three minutes to share the problem and potential solutions, followed by a couple of minutes for questions. Ideathon participants then chose which challenge they wanted to focus on, dividing into small groups. (Five of the challenges had a critical mass of participants for further exploration.)

Before the groups started their brainstorming, Talwalkar said, “I’m not sure what this will look like, but that is part of the fun. We will all leave here today with more ideas, and perhaps some with a prototype.” As the groups started to focus on the challenges, the ETI team shared strategies to bolster brainstorming. Leydon had people practice “brainwriting,” where each person silently wrote four to ten ideas, focusing on quantity over quality. He explained this practice has multiple benefits, such as reducing groupthink and dominant personality interference, encouraging creative thinking without immediate judgement, and generating a diverse range of ideas quickly. Additionally, Perry provided guidance on how to craft and leverage user personas—fictional, generalized representations of users—to enhance solution development. She explained how personas help keep the end users' goals and needs at the forefront throughout technology design and development.

Early evening, the five groups presented their solutions to the challenges they had focused on, followed by audience questions and comments. The gathering closed with a wine and cheese reception in the Medical Historical Library, furthering the day’s networking opportunities.

Reflecting on the event, Makutonin stated it was “wonderful to collaborate with a brilliant team and see what folks at YSM are working on.” He also shared that after the event, his group “got the opportunity to continue working on this project with YSM leadership, and I'm excited to see where this team and this project goes!” Zhang added, “I am excited to see Yale embracing AI and mixed-reality platforms within medical education. The Ideathon was an excellent opportunity to see how my peers uniquely embraced these new innovations, and I hope to attend more in the future and see how these ideas inspire other new projects.”

Talwalkar echoed this positivity, stating, “The event was a big success! People with different skillsets came together to work on solutions to five different problems. Deliverables from the work groups ranged from brainstorming big-picture ideas, to building working prototypes. We’re already having conversations about moving projects forward, either with formal involvement of the ETI team or through the connections that participants made with each other at the Ideathon itself.” Talwalkar believes the ETI team now has a better understanding of the educational needs of the YSM community and the collective skills to address those needs. Omollo adds that multiple faculty and student participants used the word “fun” in their feedback and requested more events for collaborative development in the future.