EdAI Systems

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Perspectives on Medical Board Education

Thought leadership on AI in assessment, constrained competence, and the future of professional certification.

Published

Industry

The Professional Begging Crisis: Why Medical Boards Can't Scale Assessment

America's medical specialty boards run on a dirty secret: they survive by begging busy surgeons to write exam questions for free. After 15 years in medical board leadership, I can tell you this system is broken.

John C. Ferguson, MD, FACS·March 12, 2026·15 min read
Framework

Content-Driven Intelligence: The End of Assessment Scarcity

The paradigm shift from question-centric to content-centric assessment. Why the content repository is the asset, not the question, and what that changes about everything.

John C. Ferguson, MD, FACS·March 6, 2026·12 min read
Research

Content Access Is Not Content Control: What OpenEvidence's Open-Book Failure Reveals About Medical AI

We gave a $210M medical AI platform an open-book exam. The answers were in their database. They still failed. Here's what that means for certification.

John C. Ferguson, MD, FACS·March 6, 2026·8 min read

Coming Soon

More articles in development:

◆Constrained Competence: Why Healthcare AI Must Know What It Doesn't Know
◆Why Your Board Needs an Air-Gapped Question Bank
◆From Presentation to Assessment in 10 Minutes
◆AI Proctoring vs. Human Proctoring: Why We Use Both
◆The 10 Billion Sensors Principle: Why AI Can't Replace Clinical Judgment

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