Once each year, I take on a physical challenge for a charitable cause.  This year I am running the Boston Marathon as part of the MGH team sponsoring the Center for Interprofessional Studies and Innovation (CIPSI).  CIPSI is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which does not garner funding from MGH proper - sponsorship is going to be essential for our growth.

  non-profit, and  that n non.As one of the founding faculty members of CIPSI, I am determined to help the Center grow to fulfill its critical educational mission.  I believe that innovative interdisciplinary medical education will enable healthcare reform to begin from within the healthcare system itself.   I also believe that CIPSI’s intentions to create innovation incubators and stimulate entrepreneurial activity will help to keep the US at the forefront of the global biomedical economy.

Of course, it goes without saying that the state of the healthcare system and medical education are important to me – shortly after running this Marathon, I’m going to require a lot of healthcare.

Details about my cause: 

Innovation in medical learning has long and deep historical roots worldwide. Early systems of medical education were reported in India around 6th century BC in a classical text called Susruta Samhita. Lectureships in Chinese medicine began at the Imperial Academy in 624 AD. Arab and North African civilizations had flourishing medical learning systems, as did the Greeks and the Mesoamerican civilizations. In the UK, the Royal College of Physicians started in the 17th century.  This past summer, my colleagues at the Massachusetts General Hospital created a living organism that emits laser light, something that has great potential for medical imaging applications.   And this is just one example of the myriad discoveries being announced every day.  In fact, just since I wrote the first draft of this story, colleagues from my very department reported an important new finding concerning Alzheimer’s Disease.  Every Day!  But the realization of applying such potential requires not just a continuation of innovation in medical learning at historical levels, but rather an acceleration of it, such that medical education can keep pace with the incredible rate of discovery and technological advancement that we are currently experiencing in this country. 

The MGH Institute of Health Professions has created a new center in which leaders in the health professions can collaborate with peers in other disciplines and create educational systems designed to improve patient care.  The Center for Interprofessional Studies and Innovation (CIPSI) brings to the forefront the Institute’s founding heritage as one of the first health care graduate schools in the country, while providing the framework to forge a new model of health sciences education for the 21st century.  This is especially relevant in the wake of 2010's historic health care reform bill which promises to dramatically alter the medical landscape.  It is clear that the future of health care depends upon creating teams of health care professionals to provide more comprehensive patient care.  Several reports conclude that teaching health professions students in teams improves the overall health of patients, but long-standing barriers to interprofessional education within both the education and medical worlds will be difficult to overcome.   These findings were published in an article in the November 29, 2010, Lancet:"Health professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world."   CIPSI provides the bridge to coordinate efforts across all disciplines and create innovative curricula.

The new center will have multiple purposes, including:

• Extending the Institute’s educational mission,
• Creating an incubator for innovation and entrepreneurial activity,
• Fostering a spirit of creativity and innovation, and
• Providing core courses in curricular areas such as genetics, informatics, ethics, and statistics

I hope that you found these links and websites to be thought provoking, and hopefully, reflective of a cause worthy of your support.  Remember, this is about teaching, about trying something new, about a different approach to solving a major national problem.  If you like the concept, please do feel free to pass it on.

Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.

John Dewey