Role of Artificial Intelligence in Health Research: Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications for Medical Education

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally reshaping the landscape of health research, with applications spanning drug discovery, clinical diagnosis, patient monitoring, and medical education. This paper examines the transformative potential of AI technologies, including machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing, across these domains, while critically evaluating the ethical, legal, and infrastructural challenges their adoption entails. Particular attention is paid to issues of algorithmic bias, data privacy, clinical accountability, and the growing imperative to integrate AI literacy into medical training. Particularly relevant to the Canadian context, this paper contends that realizing AI's promise in health research demands simultaneous progress on three fronts: technical innovation, a contextually grounded ethical framework, and a healthcare workforce equipped to navigate an AI-augmented practice environment.