MedAI Lexicon

Plain language explanations of AI concepts for physicians, basic science researchers, and clinical researchers.

Created by Ram Paragi

The Language of Medical AI

A glossary of AI terminologies tailored specifically for our community.

Choose your persona: click the colored tabs on each card to switch definitions based on your role.

MedAI companion resources

Additional tools to support responsible use of medical AI.

AI Terms

Click any term below to view its definition and persona-specific explanations

Scroll inside the panel below to see all terms.

Select a term on the left to see its definition and persona based explanations.

MedAI Fluency Studio

A short guided self assessment developed to help faculty, residents, fellows, and staff understand their current AI fluency and plan practical next steps using the MedAI Lexicon.

Start the assessment

MedAI MicroModules

15 bite-sized videos (3–8 minutes each) that walk you through every core concept — perfect for busy schedules. Watch in order or jump to your focus areas.

Watch the MicroModules

Suggested MedAI Lexicon Term Clusters

These five clusters group related concepts. Use them before or after the Fluency Studio to explore your focus areas.

Prompt Mastery

prompt engineering · system prompt · few-shot · chain-of-thought · temperature · sampling · style transfer

Model Fundamentals

tokenization · embeddings · latent space · attention · residual streams · scaling laws · hallucinations

Practical Use Cases

RAG · agents · quantization · LoRA · diffusion models · multimodal · data centers

Safety & Evaluation

hallucinations · RLHF · guardrails · prompt injection · bias · data privacy · emergent abilities

Workflow & Governance

human-in-the-loop · RAG workflows · agents · orchestration · governance · evaluation frameworks