Forum on the Future of Academic Medicine: Final session - Implications of the information revolution for academic medicine

The seventh and final meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges' (AAMC's) Forum on the Future of Academic Medicine began December 4, 1998, with a talk by William W. Stead, MD, associate vice-chancellor for health affairs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and director of its informatics center. Dr. Stead envisions a future in which informatics and information technology will place the consumer squarely in the center of the system, empowered with greater knowledge of health care; he gave three short scenarios to illustrate future typical interactions of consumers with the system. He then discussed the implications for academic medicine. For example, academic medical centers (AMCs) could become the information providers and quality assurance hubs of their regions. Various participants questioned some of the speaker's claims (one asserting that there would be serious complications if clinical information were made available to patients). The second speaker, Valerie Florance, PhD, director of the AAMC's better-health@here.now program, discussed her program, whose purpose is to explore the ways medical schools and teaching hospitals can best use information technology and the Internet in the coming decade to improve individual and community health. Nothing in the ensuing discussion indicated that the participants believed that academic medical centers would be spared painful dislocations if they were to embark on a road of institutional reform to respond to the pressures of the new and more competitive global economy. Greater awareness of this not-necessarily-welcomed message may be one of the lasting legacies of the forum.