Building an Engineering-Based Medical College: Is the Timing Ripe for the Picking?

The current US healthcare faces two major challenges in that while the cost is very high its overall outcome is not excellent. In its 2014 report, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) informed us that healthcare expenditure of the USA costs 16.9 % gross domestic products (GDP) in 2012, the highest of all OECD countries [1]. Yet according to a 2014 study conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, the USA is ranked the very last in overall healthcare quality among 11 nations including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the USA [2]. Specifically, the USA is last or near last on measures of access, efficiency, and equity [2]. Furthermore, the current medical practice is outpaced by the rapid advancement of health science and technology. A recent survey on genetic curricula in USA and Canadian medical schools found that only 26 % responders reported formal genetic teaching during third and fourth year of school, and most responders felt the amount of time spent on genetics was insufficient for future clinical practice in this era of genomic medicine [3]. Not only medical educators felt the current medical education lags, students at Harvard Medical School expressed similar sentiment [4]. They felt that “our ability and capacity to train both new and experienced clinicians to manage the tremendous amount of data lag far behind the pace of the data revolution” and that “medical education at all levels must come to address data management and utilization issues as we enter the era of Big Data in the clinical domain” [4]. In addition, recent studies have pointed out that advanced technology useful to teach undergraduate medical knowledge and skills such as sonography and otolaryngology was underutilized [5, 6]. Since undergraduate medical education is the exclusive physician pipeline and the gateway to the future of medicine, what we educate the medical students today would have a profound influence what the physicians will practice in the 50 years ahead. The most effective way to transformmedicine of the future is, therefore, through medical education reform. Comparing the dynamic development of health science and technology and relative static medical education, one wonders if today’s medical education would be optimal in nurturing future physicians. Furthermore, the combined findings of low efficiency and high expenditure of the US health system has prompted the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to call for the implementation of three aims ofmedicine in the future: “better care, better health, and lower costs” [7, 8]. In his commencement speech delivered at the University of Illinois College of Medicine on May 8th, 2015, Dr. Victor Dzau, President of IOM, encouraged the medical graduates to “be innovative, challenge the status quo, think out of the box, and make a difference!” The news of first Engineeringbased medical school, Carle-University of Illinois College of Medicine, to be established at the University of Illinois Urbana/Champagne Campus has triggered various reactions within academic medicine community [9]. An engineeringbased medical education curriculum, which intends to promote innovation, creativity, and efficiency, could indeed be a roadmap to the future of medicine. In this commentary article, the goal of engineering education will be defined, followed by an attempt to solidify the meaning of engineering-based medical education, and then the rationale for the engineering* Lawrence S. Chan larrycha@uic.edu