KANSAS CITY, Mo. — New artificial intelligence technology at Kansas City University is giving medical students a leg up as they enter the workforce.
KCU is the first in the country to implement Butterfly Scan Lab technology in classrooms.
Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) training has been a growing area of medicine for some time, but this specific hand-held ultrasound device provides students with direct AI-generated feedback.
“The really nice thing about Point-of-Care Ultrasound is it can give you a lot of quick, clinical answers that you used to have to wait long periods of time for,” said Dr. George Chou, assistant professor of osteopathic manipulative medicine at KCU.
Chou is teaching the process in an elective course this semester.
The curriculum is focused on learning how to use the device, which scans the body and helps diagnose patients bedside.
“It gives real-time feedback about what they are looking at, so that’s really cool,” said teacher assistant Pedro De Castro. “Just being able to know how to do this even before getting to residency gives you kind of a leg up and gives you intro into how this works.”
First-year med student Hannah Hart said the hands-on learning model makes all the difference.
“Like, ‘Oh, there’s the tendon, there’s the nerve,'" Hart said. "I’ve been learning about it, I’ve seen it in a cadaver, but to actually see it in a living person is really cool."
Chou said not only is the device a great learning tool for students to get ahead in the industry but it has the potential to better patient care.
While MRIs can set patients back thousands of dollars, this new bedside tool will only cost hundreds.
“As we’re moving into the next 10, 20 years, it’s kind of an expectation that every medical student will have some level of skill with this,” Chou said.
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