In July 2025, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) convened its Thought Leaders Assembly to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can transform nursing education, clinical practice, and health equity. The summit brought together leaders from academia, data science, and clinical practice, with the core focus on how AI should be responsibly integrated into nursing curricula and professional workflows to prepare the future workforce for a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape.
Centered on the theme "Examining the Potential of AI to Transform Nursing Education", the event featured expert insights and collaborative dialogue on AI's role in advancing innovation, equity, and academic leadership in nursing. The full report and additional resources are available on the AACN's AI in Nursing Education resource page.
Emerging Consensus: AI Is Core to Nursing's Future
The AACN report makes a clear case: AI and related technologies such as data science and informatics are not "bolt-on" tools — they're core competencies for nurses. Educators must intentionally prepare nurses to use AI to enhance decision-making, improve patient outcomes, and promote health equity.
Importantly, presenters stressed that AI should support human expertise, not replace it, and that sound governance, training, and ethical oversight must accompany any rollout.
But the big challenge — one highlighted in this and other research — is implementation. Nursing faculty already face severe resource limitations:
- Chronic shortages of clinical placement sites and preceptors
- A widening gap between the number of qualified applicants and education capacity
- Limited time for individualized student mentoring
Independent research shows that AI's benefits extend beyond theoretical promise — they can address real practical problems in nursing education and clinical training.
Independent Evidence Supports Practical AI Use in Clinical Education
Peer-reviewed studies on AI in health professions education consistently show that AI tools can:
Enhance personalized learning and competency development
AI-driven educational platforms can adapt content and pacing to individual learners, improving engagement and outcomes.
Improve efficiency in clinical decision-making and workflow
AI accelerates data interpretation and frees clinicians from routine tasks, allowing greater focus on patient care.
Strengthen tracking and documentation systems
Electronic clinical tracking systems improve the accuracy, timeliness, and completeness of student clinical logs — critical for competency-based nursing programs and accreditation reporting.
These findings align with the AACN's vision that technology must be purposefully integrated into education — not simply added to existing workload.
The Gap in Current Practice
Despite broad enthusiasm for AI, numerous barriers remain:
- Faculty often lack the time and tools to meaningfully review student clinical performance
- Traditional clinical tracking methods (paper logs or spreadsheets) are slow, error-prone, and difficult to analyze in real time
- Students may complete required clinical activities but still lack insight into competency gaps until very late in their programs
Research confirms that without modern tracking and analytics, educators can't efficiently ensure and demonstrate student competency.
Where HealthTasks Fits In
This is where HealthTasks comes into its own. By combining the AACN's call for strategic use of AI with evidence-backed needs in clinical education, HealthTasks delivers a solution that:
Supports Real-Time Clinical Tracking
HealthTasks provides electronic clinical tracking — capturing tasks, competencies, and activities as they occur, unlike traditional lagging systems. This mirrors the benefit of electronic clinical tracking systems validated in independent literature that such systems enhance accuracy and faculty access to meaningful student data.
Reduces Administrative Burden for Faculty
By automating logging and reporting and applying AI insights, educators spend less time on paperwork and more time on teaching and remediation — directly addressing the AACN's concern about faculty capacity.
Enables Competency-Based Education at Scale
The platform aligns logs with competencies and offers real-time dashboards, so programs can monitor cohort performance and individual needs — crucial for modern, outcomes-focused education.
Leverages AI Responsibly
HealthTasks uses AI to assist human educators, not replace them — reflecting AACN's emphasis on human-in-the-loop frameworks and ethical deployment.
A Shared Vision for the Future
The AACN's Thought Leaders Assembly, combined with a growing body of independent research, points to a future where nursing programs leverage AI thoughtfully and strategically. Solutions like HealthTasks are not just innovative — they are necessary to meet the demands of nursing education and workforce readiness in a technology-driven era.
By enabling real-time, competency-aligned tracking and using AI to free educators and empower learners, HealthTasks delivers on the promise of the AACN's vision — transforming nursing education for the challenges of today and tomorrow.