Contemporary issues in medicine - Medical informatics and population health: Report II of the Medical School Objectives Project

The Association of American Medical Colleges established the Medical School Objectives Project (MSOP) to set forth program-level learning objectives t hat medical school deans and faculties can use as guides in reviewing their medical student education programs (initial phase), and to suggest strateg ies that they might employ in implementing agreed-upon changes in those pro grams (implementation phase). The publication of MSOP Report I in 1998 conc luded the initial phase of the project by presenting 30 program-level learn ing objectives that represent a consensus within the medical education comm unity on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students should possess before graduation from medical school. Report II, published here, is the wo rk of two expert panels that focus on the two interrelated topics of medica l informatics and population health for which Report I developed learning o bjectives. The Medical Informatics Panel identified five roles played by physicians-li felong learner, clinician, educator-communicator, researcher, and manager-i n which medical informatics plays a vital part, and defined one or more inf ormatics learning objectives important for each role (e.g., the successful medical school graduate, in his or her role as a clinician, should be able to retrieve patient-specific information from a clinical information system ). The panel then identified ways that schools might implement educational programs to address the various informatics learning objectives and to even tually embed informatics experiences throughout the curriculum rather than relying on an informatics course to achieve some or all of the objectives. The Population Health Perspective Panel developed a consensus definition of "population health perspective" (PHP); chose four types of populations to discuss (e.g., the geographic community); reviewed pressures for and agains t the implementation of a PHS in the curriculum (e.g., the cross-disciplina ry nature of the topic is a barrier); named the fields that encompass train ing in a PHP (e.g., public health); listed several educational objectives, three principles to govern the design of educational activities, and a numb er of recommendations; and closed with a list of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that should be instilled by a successful PHF curriculum.