Use AI in Medicine / Course 4

Agents 101 for Physician Developers

Move from AI conversations to bounded, observable, and verifiable agentic work without surrendering clinical judgment.

beginner 35 minutes 3 lessons
Who this is for
Physicians who already use ChatGPT or another general-purpose AI tool.
Course outcome
Design an AI-assisted workflow that protects clinical judgment, data quality, and accountability.

You already know how to ask AI a question. The next skill is learning how to give it a job.

This five-part course teaches physicians to supervise the loop: define the assignment, control access, observe the work, prove the result, and stop the agent when judgment belongs to a human.

Course Outcomes

What you will learn

  • Distinguish chatbots, AI-assisted workflows, and agents through the agent loop.
  • Identify the model, harness, tools, context, permissions, evaluations, and human checkpoints in an agentic system.
  • Delegate a small development assignment with explicit boundaries and acceptance criteria.
  • Supervise an agent from clinical workflow observation through a tested software prototype.
  • Match agent autonomy to privacy, verification, governance, and clinical risk.

Before You Begin

Prerequisites

  • Routine use of at least one general-purpose AI assistant; no coding experience is required for the first lesson.

Ordered Syllabus

Complete the lessons in sequence.

Each article remains at its original URL. Its position here supplies the learning context.

  1. 01 Lesson 1 / beginner / 10 min From Chatbot to Agent Recognize the agent loop, choose an appropriate level of autonomy, and identify the human checkpoints a physician must retain. Explain the difference between a chatbot response and an agentic workflow. Read lesson
  2. 02 Lesson 2 / beginner / 12 min The Harness Is the Workplace Compare agent environments by execution location, context, tools, permissions, and review surfaces instead of product rankings. Explain why an agent harness matters as much as the model it contains. Read lesson
  3. 03 Lesson 3 / beginner / 13 min Your First Agentic Workflow Delegate one small software assignment with explicit scope, approval points, tests, and evidence for review. Write an assignment brief that defines the problem, user, source of truth, scope, constraints, and stopping condition. Read lesson