Dr. Papa’s research interest in education began shortly after joining UNTHSC in 1979 when a student asked him to explain how he was using each piece of patient data, one sign and symptom at a time, to arrive at a diagnosis. While unable to provide a coherent answer, he used his programming and math skills to create a crude, computer-based model that could explicitly represent how a physician might process each sign/symptom while diagnosing patients with acute chest pain.
This computer-based representation of diagnostic reasoning eventually led to the construction of an artificial intelligence tool called KBIT. Dr. Papa has since redesigned KBIT as an intelligent, web-based tutor that allows students to acquire the declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge that serve as antecedents to the development of diagnostic competence.