First Person: AI MedTrailblazers Education Platform
First Person is an occasional series, providing firsthand accounts of outreach programs involving the McGovern Medical School community. This issue features McGovern Medical School students and AI MedTrailblazers Co-Founders, Pranav Mehta, Emily Zhou, and Matthew Ramsey.
Revolutionizing Medical Training: How Three McGovern Students Built a Nationwide AI Education Platform
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a distant concept – it is actively transforming healthcare, redefining diagnostics, treatment strategies, and clinical decision-making. Yet, despite AI’s increasing presence in medicine, most healthcare trainees lack structured education on how to effectively integrate AI into clinical practice and navigate the digital health shift.
Recognizing this critical gap, three McGovern Medical School students—Pranav Mehta, Emily Zhou, and Matthew Ramsey (PEM)—co-founded AI MedTrailblazers, a trainee-focused initiative designed to bridge the AI literacy divide and prepare future healthcare providers for a world where AI tools and medicine are intertwined.
What began as a student-led effort at McGovern Medical School quickly gained traction, drawing interest from healthcare trainees, residents, and fellows across the Texas Medical Center—the largest medical center in the world. Driven by a mission to democratize AI education, the initiative rapidly expanded beyond Houston, establishing a statewide ambassador network with representatives from nearly every medical school in Texas. In just six months, AI MedTrailblazers has evolved into a vibrant national community, uniting over 450 healthcare trainees, physician faculty, and institutional leaders across the United States.
At its core, AI MedTrailblazers is committed to inclusivity and accessibility. The program offers free, high-quality educational opportunities for healthcare trainees to learn from world-renowned AI experts, regardless of their technical background. Whether a trainee is new to AI or an experienced programmer, AI MedTrailblazers provides participants with the knowledge, mentorship, and confidence to begin navigating the digital health landscape.
The program’s curated education series explores cutting-edge topics at the intersection of AI and healthcare, including large language models (LLMs), wearable technologies, robotic surgery, ethics, entrepreneurship, and AI applications across clinical subspecialties. To deliver these insights, AI MedTrailblazers has partnered with world-renowned experts from prestigious institutions such as the White House, Google, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Stanford University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Mayo Clinic, Duke University, and UTHealth Houston’s McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics.
Through expert-led discussions and hands-on learning, the program provides trainees with the knowledge to assess AI’s capabilities, understand its limitations, and integrate its innovations responsibly. By bridging the gap between technology and clinical practice, AI MedTrailblazers serves as a kickstarter—introducing future healthcare providers to AI’s role in medicine and equipping them with the foundational knowledge to begin leveraging its potential in patient care.
Looking ahead, AI MedTrailblazers is focused on building a sustainable, nationwide movement.
“Our vision is to establish AI MedTrailblazer chapters in every graduate school across the U.S., creating a network that connects trainees with local AI experts in their respective healthcare domains—including medicine, public health, nursing, dentistry, and more,” said Pranav Mehta, co-founder and co-president. “Beyond local chapters, we are building a nationwide trainee-focused AI Coalition offering workshops, conferences, scholarships, mentorship programs, and other resources to help students thrive through this technological shift.”
The rapid success of AI MedTrailblazers would not have been possible without the support of UTHealth Houston and McGovern Medical School. “UTHealth Houston’s guidance and forward-thinking approach have transformed this initiative into a valuable AI education resource for trainees nationwide,” said PEM.
As Elmer Bernstam, MD, MSE, core faculty advisor to AI MedTrailblazers and professor at the McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics and McGovern Medical School, explains: “AI will disrupt many fields, including healthcare. Therefore, it is important for clinical trainees—especially medical students—to understand AI so they can help realize its positive potential.”
AI MedTrailblazers demonstrates the power of student-driven innovation in medical education. Through deeper collaborations between healthcare trainees, leading AI experts, and industry professionals, AI MedTrailblazers is preparing the next generation to not just become passive adopters of AI but leading decision-makers who can drive forward its responsible integration into patient care.
If you are interested in joining AI MedTrailblazers as a learner, educator, or launching a chapter at your institution, please email [email protected].