New visiting professor at KI to advance medical education research

“My colleagues and I are very proud of this prize, the only one of its kind in this field, which has helped to develop this discipline worldwide”, he says.

We’ll be seeing more of him now, he promises. As a visiting professor with an initial three-year appointment, he will be visiting KI more regularly to help build a network that promotes research in this field. This is part of KI’s strategic initiative on medical education research.

“Together with KI, I want to promote and drive the entire field of research forward. Medical education research depends on knowledge from other disciplines, and at KI there are excellent opportunities to gather leading researchers from neuroscience, psychology, education, and computer science to investigate important questions,” says Brian Hodges.

A comparison with taxi drivers

At the launch of the new strategic initiative at KI his entertaining keynote speech somewhat unexpectedly focused on a profession other than the medical: taxi drivers. It turns out that they are trained and examined with an emphasis on different skills in different countries. Their reaction to Uber entering and changing their market also differed.

“There is a parallel with how we in medical education relate to AI today. Universities are at crossroads: should they turn a blind eye and continue to educate as they always have? Or should they allow AI education to be taken over by external forces? If AI is to be integrated into our programmes, how can this be done responsibly?”

In his talk, he also discussed the human aspect of communication – with compassion – in relation to artificial intelligence. 

“We need to define the specific skills that humans possess which will become particularly important as artificial intelligence takes over certain tasks,” says Brian Hodges.

He also believes that metacognitive ability in relation to AI is extremely important, i.e. the ability to become aware of how one thinks. Metacognition is crucial to our ability to think critically at the right moment. Hodges argues that educational programmes need to teach and value this ability more than they do today, as it can be crucial for understanding when information from an AI tool can be relied upon and when it cannot. He gives the example of a surgeon standing at the operating table with a three-dimensional internal AI image of their patient. The surgeon must be able to determine when the AI is ’hallucinating’ and no longer showing reality.

The significance of examinations

In his previous research, Brian Hodges has addressed the concept of competence and how to assess and recognise it. He will soon be publishing a new book on examinations. He is fascinated by exams both as a tool and as a phenomenon, and believes that we allow them to define our lives.

“Exams can open or close doors for us. As a society and as individuals, we attach enormous importance to them. In fact, I wrote an entire chapter in the book about how people continue to dream about exams, even years after taking them," he says. 

The number of exams is increasing worldwide, with many colleges and universities including them in their admissions processes. In the US, the situation has become so extreme that even very young children are assessed through exams for admission to certain nurseries. Examinations are used everywhere – for classification, selection, licensing, professional regulation, verification of expertise, and the protection of professional roles.

“These are, of course, important functions, but examinations are rarely used as a tool for teaching through meaningful feedback. If we are not careful, I believe we risk missing out on a huge opportunity within the healthcare professions”, says Brian Hodges.

Brian Hodges took up his position as visiting professor at Karolinska Institutet in March 2026.