In May, the Sam Houston State University College of Osteopathic Medicine was awarded $25,000 to support the university’s new artificial intelligence (AI) education initiative – a program the school’s dean says will prepare its resident physicians to become leaders in both technology and clinical care.
The three-year award was provided through the Innovations in Graduate Medical Education Development Grant from the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. The monies will support SHSU-COM's new AI Across Residency program, carried out across residencies connected through the Sam Houston Regional Education Consortium (SHREC).
The initiative will train residents in participating residency programs on the safe use of AI, while building a model that others can adopt. The university seeks to embed AI-trained physicians in rural communities across Texas during their final year of residency, according to the college’s dean, Thomas J. Mohr, DO.
“The issue with AI is nobody really knows where it's going,” Dr. Mohr, also vice president for medical affairs at Sam Houston State University and a consultant to the Texas Medical Association’s Council on Medical Education, told Texas Medicine Today. “Most physicians are now using it in some form and believe it's going to change [medicine], but nobody quite knows what that means yet. So, this program is an early step for us to examine that.”
By introducing new physicians to real-world AI applications in medicine, Dr. Mohr said the initiative’s curriculum will increase their “AI literacy and confidence, critical thinking, and ethical discernment when using AI assisted decision making.”
AI Across Residency has three specific aims:
- To develop and implement an AI-integrated residency education incorporating specialty-relevant AI models, case-based learning, and simulation exercises;
- To train faculty on emerging AI technology via development workshops, interdisciplinary mentorships, and partnerships with data science and health technology experts; and
- To evaluate the program’s impact and potential scalability by tracking how it impacts clinical workflow improvement and patient outcomes, with the aim of sharing the curriculum with other residency programs nationwide.
Support for AI Across Residency comes from SHSU-COM’s Medical Artificial Intelligence Institute, which the university launched last year. Other residency programs across Texas have also begun adding AI education to their curricula – in 2025, the UT Health San Antonio Long School of Medicine began hosting AI training sessions for its residents. In 2023, it launched the country’s first master of science in artificial intelligence dual-degree program.
“I don't believe people believe AI is going to replace physicians, but I think physicians who don't use AI are probably going to get replaced,” Dr. Mohr said. “This is how residency programs keep up.”
For more information about AI, see TMA’s comprehensive AI resource center.
Alisa Pierce
Reporter, Division of Communications and Marketing
(512) 370-1469