New Delhi, December 31, 2025 — The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) just launched a free online course on Artificial Intelligence in Medical Education. They’re opening it up to postgraduate doctors, faculty, trainees, alumni, and really, anyone in the medical field who wants in. This move is all about helping medical professionals get comfortable with digital tools and making sure they’re ready to use AI safely, ethically, and wisely in both patient care and training.
The programme will start in January 2026 and runs for six months, all online and live. It’s divided into 20 segments, each segment is focused on everyday clinical needs, patient safety, ethics, and how to use AI sensibly while treating people or teaching students. If you continue and complete the course, have a proper attendance as per rules, and pass the online assessment, you’ll get a digital certificate at the end.
Who can join?
The list’s pretty broad: current NBEMS postgrad trainees, NBEMS alumni (from 2020 onwards), faculty from NBEMS-accredited departments, and any registered medical practitioner interested in AI’s role in healthcare and education. You don’t need to know how to code, so clinicians and teachers who just want to understand the basics are welcome. And yes, it’s totally free.
As for what you’ll learn, the course aims to give you a solid grounding in how AI fits into healthcare today. You’ll get to grips with basic AI concepts (no programming required), learn how to judge AI tools and research for usefulness and fairness, and figure out when and how to use AI in real-life decisions. Ethics, legal stuff, privacy, and cybersecurity all get their due—especially from an Indian healthcare perspective. You’ll also see how clinicians can work side by side with data scientists and engineers as part of AI teams.
Sessions are directed by specialists from big names like the Mayo Clinic, Harvard University, University of Oxford, Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru, and IIM Lucknow, among others.
To earn your certificate, you’ll had to attend at least 75% of the live classes (they will check attendance at both times, at the starting of the session and at the end of each session). Watching only recorded sessions won’t count. At the end, there’s a short online test you have to pass.
This course shows that NBEMS knows how fast AI is changing healthcare—from diagnosis to research to teaching. They want to make sure doctors and educators use AI as a smart support tool, not a replacement for real clinical judgment, and that everything stays rooted in ethics and patient safety.
You can apply right now through the official NBEMS/Natboard website. Seats are limited, so registering early is a good idea.