AI and Assessment in Health Education: What Are Faculty Saying?

On Thursday 8 October 2026, Elsevier hosted the webinar, Rethinking Assessment: Healthcare Education in the Age of AI, to explore how assessment in healthcare education needs to evolve as AI becomes embedded in both learning and practice. The webinar featured leading experts in the field, each offering a distinct perspective on the risks, opportunities and practical realities of redesigning assessment for an AI-enabled world.

During the session, we ran four live audience poll questions to better understand how educators and faculty members across the globe are currently perceiving and approaching AI and assessment in health education. The results revealed strong appetite for change, but far less clarity on how to turn it into practice.

What the audience told us

Q1: How is your institution currently approaching assessment redesign in light of AI?

Despite AI’s growing role in healthcare education, the vast majority (86%) haven’t made significant, systematic changes to assessment yet.

• 37% said they’ve made some ad hoc changes, but nothing systematic
• 27% said they’re actively discussing and planning changes
• Only 14% said they’ve made significant changes to their assessment methods
• 13% said they haven’t addressed it yet

Q2: What is your biggest concern about assessment in the age of AI?

Faculty concerns are varied rather than concentrated, but trust runs through all of them – with authenticity of student work and the evidence behind AI outputs raised most often.

• 29% said not being able to tell genuine competence from AI-generated work
• 29% said not being confident AI outputs are backed by legitimate, verifiable scientific evidence
• 22% said faculty not being familiar or confident enough with AI to create questions and evaluate AI-assisted work
• 20% said losing trust in the validity of current assessment formats

Q3: What would help faculty most as they navigate assessment redesign for the AI era?

Faculty want practical, real-world examples to guide assessment redesign.

• The majority (53%) said real-world examples and case studies of redesigned assessment approaches
• 37% said support and training to build confidence in judging AI-influenced student work
• 10% said protected time to get familiar with new approaches

Q4: To what extent should AI be integrated into student assessments?

Most favor a middle ground: allowing AI occasionally, but assessing the thinking behind it.

• The majority (58%) said AI should be permitted occasionally, with assessment focused on the reasoning and process behind AI-assisted work rather than the final answer
• 19% said it should be fully integrated, with AI fluency formally assessed as a core competency
• 16% said not at all, keeping assessments AI-free to protect core skills
• Only 7% said AI should be used just for early-stage tasks (idea generation, literature searching)

Where do we go from here?

Faculty aren’t resisting AI in healthcare education assessment – they’re simply looking for a way to do it well.

As AI becomes part of how students work, faculty recognize the need to approach assessment with an open mind. What’s missing is a clear picture of what successful integration looks like in practice. And with few institutions having taken systematic action, faculty can be left in limbo: ready to adapt, but without the guidelines, support or best-practice examples to do so. The challenge now isn’t convincing faculty to change, but giving them the guidance, examples and institutional backing to do it with confidence.

Elsevier is committed to helping educators bring AI into learning and assessment with confidence – through trusted, evidence-based content and AI-powered tools, designed so that students and faculty can trust what they’re working with.

Watch the full webinar

Catch up on the recording to hear our expert panel’s insights on rethinking assessment in the age of AI, featuring:

• Shiran Juttla – Director of Product Management and AI Products at Elsevier
• Professor Juan José Beunza Nuin – Professor of Public Health and Interprofessional Education and Director of the AI and Health Research Group (IASalud) at the European University of Madrid (UEM)
• Pippa Furey – Senior Lecturer in Paramedic Practice and Emergency Care at Nottingham Trent University, National AI Lead (Education) at the Royal College of Paramedics
• David Game – Senior Vice President of Medical Education Partnerships at Elsevier