title: Changing Medical School IT to Support Medical Education Transformation.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Many medical schools are modifying curricula to reflect the rapidly evolving health care environment, but schools struggle to provide the educational informatics technology (IT) support to make the necessary changes. Often a medical school's IT support for the education mission derives from isolated work units employing separate technologies that are not interoperable.
  
  
  METHODS
  We launched a redesigned, tightly integrated, and novel IT infrastructure to support a completely revamped curriculum at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine. This system uses coordinated and interoperable technologies to support new instructional methods, capture students' effort, and manage feedback, allowing the monitoring of students' progress toward specific competency goals across settings and programs.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  The new undergraduate medical education program at Vanderbilt, entitled Curriculum 2.0, is a competency-based curriculum in which the ultimate goal is medical student advancement based on performance outcomes and personal goals rather than a time-based sequence of courses. IT support was essential in the creation of Curriculum 2.0. In addition to typical learning and curriculum management functions, IT was needed to capture data in the learning workflow for analysis, as well as for informing individual and programmatic success. We aligned people, processes, and technology to provide the IT infrastructure for the organizational transformation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Educational IT personnel were successfully realigned to create the new IT system. The IT infrastructure enabled monitoring of student performance within each competency domain across settings and time via personal student electronic portfolios. Students use aggregated performance data, derived in real time from the portfolio, for mentor-guided performance assessment, and for creation of individual learning goals and plans. Poorly performing students were identified earlier through online communication systems that alert the appropriate instructor or coach of low quiz grades or missed learning goals. Graphical and narrative displays of a student's competency performance across courses and clinical experiences informed high-stake decisions made about student progress by the promotions committee. Similarly, graphical display of aggregate student outcomes provided education leaders with information needed to adjust and improve the curriculum.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  With the alignment of people, processes, and technology, educational IT can facilitate transformational steps in the training of medical students.
authors.affiliation: a Office of Educational Informatics and Technology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine , Nashville , Tennessee , USA.|b Vanderbilt University Medical Center Education Informatics , Nashville , Tennessee , USA.
authors.forename: Anderson
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Spickard
authors.affiliation: b Vanderbilt University Medical Center Education Informatics , Nashville , Tennessee , USA.
authors.forename: Toufeeq
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ahmed
authors.affiliation: c Office of Undergraduate Medical Education, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine , Nashville , Tennessee , USA.
authors.forename: Kimberly
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lomis
authors.affiliation: d Department of Biomedical Informatics , Vanderbilt University Medical Center , Nashville , Tennessee , USA.
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.affiliation: e Health Sciences Education, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine , Nashville , Tennessee , USA.
authors.forename: Bonnie
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D003162:Competency-Based Education; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000639:trends*; D048088:Informatics / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012577:Schools, Medical
keywords: competency; curriculum; informatices; technology