It’s been a year since the American Medical Association (AMA) awarded $1 million to NYU School of Medicine as part of its ambitious $11 million initiative Accelerating Change in Medical Education. And this week, leaders from NYU School of Medicine and 10 other medical schools selected for the grant convened at Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine to embark on the next phase to help reshape the way medical students are educated in this country.

“There has been a universal call to transform the teaching of medicine to shift the focus of education toward real-world practice and competency assessment, which is why the AMA launched the Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative,” said Robert M. Wah, M.D., president, American Medical Association. “The AMA is proud to be leading the charge to answer this call. Over the last year, we have made significant progress in transforming curriculum at these medical schools that can and will help close the gaps that currently exist between how medical students are trained and the way health care is delivered in this country now and in the future.”

NYU School of Medicine was among 11 medical schools selected based on their bold and innovative ideas to reshape medical education. In the last year, NYU has made significant progress in its efforts to create the NYU Health Care by the Numbers Curriculum, particularly enabling for students enrolled in the school’s new three-year Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree pathway. The flexible, individualized, technology-enabled curriculum is designed to improve care coordination and quality improvement. The foundation for the curriculum is virtual patient panels derived from de-identified patient data from NYU Langone Medical Center’s Clinical Integrated Network (CIN), a network of voluntary and faculty physicians practices in the tri-state area that have business relationships with NYU Langone and share patient data, and open data health resources that immerse students in a simulated clinical setting.

NYU School of Medicine has created a group practice of virtual patient panels available for use for both NYU and other schools within the Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consor-tium. This new curriculum has been rolled out and emphasizes the use of big data and technology for patient and population management, and includes an e-Portfolio to allow students to track their own activities for quality improvement, safety and value-added care. A new online portal for student self-directed learning is being used and updated based on students’ experiences.

“The AMA grant program has been a tremendous partnership for us,” said Marc Triola, MD, associate dean for educational informatics and director of the Institute for Innovations in Medical Education at NYU School of Medicine. “The new curriculum immerses our students in complex authentic practice and population-level data that will drive innovation and improve patient outcomes. This integration of our education mission and our care delivery system enables us to train and inspire future physician leaders who will excel in the evolving health care system.”

Leaders from NYU School of Medicine shared this progress with the 10 other selected schools during this week’s meeting at Vanderbilt. The meeting is part of the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative’s learning consortium that was established to ensure the 11 selected schools share best practices and ideas for future implementation of their programs in medical schools across the country. Over the next four years, the AMA will continue to track, gather data and report on the progress of the medical schools’ collective work in order to identify and widely disseminate the best models for transformative educational change.

“Each school, including NYU School of Medicine, has taken major steps forward to advance their grant projects and, collectively, we have made great strides in moving the needle toward reshaping medical education on a national level,” said Susan Skochelak, M.D., M.P.H., AMA Group Vice President for Medical Education. “These efforts will help propel medical education into the 21st century and ultimately improve care and outcomes for patients.”

As part of the consortium, NYU School of Medicine is working with these 11 schools to reshape medical education across the country. Some of the other schools’ projects include leading-edge educational models that allow medical students to gain experience within the health care system from day one of medical school, new curriculum that give students with prior healthcare experience an opportunity to progress through medical school based on individual competency, classes designed to boost physician leadership and team care skills, and courses that ensure medical students are trained on the use of electronic health records. Each school’s grant project can be tracked at ChangeMedEd.org.

“Through this bold and collaborative effort, the AMA is at the forefront of creating the medical school of the future and ensuring medical students are provided the training needed to become our physicians of the future,” said Dr. Skochelak.

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NYU School of Medicine
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