SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Springfield Memorial Hospital and its Foundation believe it’s in the best interest of health care to offer the best learning environment for students and the workforce.

That’s why the foundation and the Southern Illinois School of Medicine have each invested $1 million to a new piece of artificial intelligence-based technology for the Ed Curtis Laboratory for Innovation in Medical Education.

Each has contributed money toward the purchase of a new AI and Extended Reality device that will help students and doctors learn how to talk to patients and their families about the care being received.

“We have to do our part to train our workforce,” said Pam Hulten, Director, Springfield Memorial Foundation, on the WTAX Morning Newswatch.  “That means nurses.  That means everyone within our own hospital, and then the extension over in with SIU. We’ve got incredible and brilliant physicians, medical residents, and students who are eager to have learning at their fingertips.”

The features alone should be valuable, especially to students, but also to working professionals.

“In medicine, there’s this concept of de-skilling,” said Dr. Traves Crabtree, Professor and Chair of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, SIU School of Medicine, also on WTAX.  “If medical professionals are looking to AI for the answers on what a diagnosis is and how to work that up, there’s the threat that learner loses the ability to think about and develop clinical reasoning.  We’re not really in that space right now.  What we’re doing is finding out opportunities in education where there are important things that we want to teach or train, but we lack the resources or the time to be able to do that.”

According to an October news release from SIU School of Medicine, “Since early 2025, the ECLIME team has launched more than 20 research projects focused on improving educational outcomes. Its work explores how AI can deliver timely feedback, strengthen communication skills and support learning while preserving the essential role of faculty mentorship.”

The new AI and “XR” technology was showed off to the public and to Memorial Health Foundation donors last week.