Winter Edition | February 2025
 

Welcome

Greetings, fellow innovators and researchers!

We're excited to invite you to this year's 12^th annual MCW Innovations in Healthcare Education Research (IHER) Conference, taking place Sept. 16-18, 2025, online and in-person at the Medical College of Wisconsin. This year’s Conference theme is, "Revolutionizing Healthcare Training: The Role of Emerging Technologies," and the event promises to be a groundbreaking exploration into how the latest advancements in technology and curricular advancements impact our community. Attendees will have the opportunity to engage with leading experts, discover innovative tools and techniques, and gain insights into the future of healthcare education research.

The Conference will feature a variety of keynote presentations, interactive workshops, roundtables, and panel discussions that highlight the transformative impact of emerging technologies on healthcare training. From virtual reality simulations to AI-driven learning platforms, we will delve into the cutting-edge solutions that are enhancing the efficacy and efficiency of medical education. Join us for an inspiring and informative experience that will equip you with the knowledge and skills to stay ahead in this rapidly evolving field.

The MCW IHER Conference semi-annual newsletter is your go-to source for everything you need to know about our Conference. In this issue, you will discover what’s in store for the 2025 IHER Conference, and we’ll celebrate the achievements of our 2024 Conference.

The 2024 IHER Conference set the bar high, bringing together over 300 enthusiastic participants from 30 states and nine countries, spanning continents from Australia to Sweden and the United Kingdom. It was a melting pot of brilliant minds and pioneering spirits. Our colleagues from MCW expressed how much they cherished the opportunity to network with fellow innovators and researchers from diverse institutions. Their feedback has inspired us to continue our mission to elevate healthcare education to new heights.

We invite you to be part of this extraordinary event by presenting your research discoveries, cutting-edge teaching strategies, and best practices in healthcare education. We believe this conference will ignite your creativity and foster collaborations that will shape the future of healthcare education. We eagerly look forward to seeing you at the IHER Conference and to being inspired together!

We value your input and ideas, so please email us at IHERConference@mcw.edu with any comments or questions.

Warm regards,

2025 MCW IHER Conference Steering Committee
 

Spotlight

Award Winners

Every year, the IHER Conference celebrates outstanding achievements in innovation and research through our oral and speed poster presentation awards. For the third time in our history, we also proudly bestowed the prestigious title of IHER Innovator of the Year upon Galina Gheihman, MD, a presenter whose extraordinary work captivated and inspired the audience. Join us in giving a hearty round of applause to Dr. Gheihman and the four exceptional 2024 IHER award winners!
 

Behind-the-Scenes

Tech Corner

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are being integrated into healthcare curricula to train the next generation of healthcare professionals. These models can assist in generating educational content, offering personalized learning experiences, and even passing medical licensing exams. At healthcare education research conferences, LLMs can facilitate discussions on the ethical implications of AI in healthcare, provide insights into AI literacy for clinicians, and offer innovative approaches to medical ethics education. By incorporating AI and LLMs into conferences, the medical community can foster a deeper understanding of these technologies and their impact on future medical practice, ultimately leading to more informed and ethically aware healthcare professionals.

The tech sector has seen exponential growth in LLMs during 2024 and this growth will not abate anytime soon. Since the 2024 IHER Conference, OpenAI released its new LLM architecture reasoner models, known as o1 and o3. The o1 model was released in September 2024 and the o3 model three months later in December. We’ve also seen open-source language models such as Google Gemini stay on the heels of frontier AI models, but the release of DeepSeek-R1 demonstrated that open-source language models can be developed more efficiently and freely used by all people.

For those who prefer frontier models such as OpenAI’s o3 model, there is usually some financial cost involved, but you can use a program such as Sider which bundles many LLM models such as OpenAI o3, DeepSeek-R1, Gemini Pro, Anthropic Claude, and Meta Llama together under one app for a nominal annual cost of $100. LM Studio does a great job of bundling open-source models together in one app.

A good starting point for most people is to use Microsoft CoPilot to get free access to GPT 4 and Microsoft Prometheus. We encourage the IHER community to use any language model at the Conference to generate inquiries or find information quickly. The IHER team will continue to use the Zoom AI Companion as an integrated solution for our online sessions.

The IHER Conference uses language models prudently and ethically to maintain a good balance between AI use and safety. Local language models are preferred for some tasks because they are free, do not need Internet access, and the data is never shared with anyone outside of the IHER Committee. Even categorizing presentations is done using local models such as Mistral, which uses an architecture called a mixture of experts (MoE) that involves multiple "expert" networks. Each expert specializes in a different part of the input space. There's also a gating network that decides which experts to consult for a given input.  

An AI agent refers to a system or program that is capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of a user or another system. The use of autonomous AI agents will start to become more familiar in 2025 and two good places to get started is AgentGPT and Microsoft Copilot Studio. If you are interested in having an AI program operate with some autonomy and automatically complete tasks sequentially, AI agents will be the programs to start using in 2025.

As a disclosure, the Tech Corner was written by a human in collaboration with Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI o3-mini, DeepSeek-R1, and Mistral. Now if only I could figure out how to get my agent to send you the information automatically and register for the Conference I’d be really happy, but I am working on it.

School of Pharmacy

The MCW School of Pharmacy is excited to continue its partnership with the IHER Committee and showcase the innovative activities and technologies being used by pharmacists and pharmacy students. Committee membership by faculty and staff has allowed us to provide diverse ideas and opportunities to help support the interprofessional strength of the IHER Conference. We look forward to other pharmacists and healthcare providers and their learners to join us this fall!
 

Moving Forward

Save the Date: September 16-18, 2025

The 12^th annual IHER Conference will be a hybrid event and is scheduled for Sept. 16-18, 2025. The IHER schedule and registration will be released much earlier this year in June to give everyone more time to plan their sessions! We recognize that everyone has a personal preference for online, in-person, and hybrid sessions. We are striving to find a good balance between the different types of sessions for everyone!

New Expert Debate Sessions

We are offering a new presentation format this year, which includes the Expert Debate! Hosting an Expert Debate session fosters dynamic and engaging discourse and provides a platform for scholars with diverse perspectives to present and defend their viewpoints on critical issues within their fields. Through these rigorous exchanges, new insights emerge, challenging existing paradigms and sparking innovative ideas. The session stimulates a collaborative learning environment, promoting a deeper understanding of complex topics. The Expert Debate session involves two people taking opposite sides of a salient issue, and through audience questions and responses, may allow the opposing sides to arrive at some common ground. Please make sure to submit an Expert Debate proposal during the second call-for-proposals on March 3.

Registration

You can register for the 2025 IHER Conference starting Monday, June 9.

Website

Check out our 2025 IHER Conference website to submit your proposals and come back monthly as we add new information about our 12^th annual Conference!

Submit an Idea

If you have an idea for the IHER Conference, no matter how large or small, no matter how wild or calm, please e-mail the IHER Committee at IHERConference@mcw.edu, using the subject heading: 2025 IHER Idea. Upon acceptance of your idea, you will receive credit on the IHER webpage, an InfoScope article and in the Conference program.
 

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