Principles of medical student and resident innovation and entrepreneurship education and training

Training in innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) in medical education has become increasingly prevalent among medical schools to train students in complex problem solving and solution design. Offerings include workshops, seminars, student clubs and courses that span part of or throughout the four years of medical school. Themes or pillars include innovation, entrepreneurship, technology, leadership, healthcare systems, business of medicine, and enhanced adaptability. We have seen many recent advances in edupreneurship.

Here are some reasons why medical students can succeed as entrepreneurs.

Here are some ways to create medical student entrepreneurs. Here is a guide to medical student entrepreneurship.

A four year medical school curriculum in innovation and entrepreneurship should be designed with these principles:

1. It supplements basic and clinical education and training required for accreditation
2. It should be progressive and consistent with Bloom's taxonomy

3. It should define competencies, educational learning outcomes (ELOs) and entrustable professional activities by the end of the four year program and across the curriculum map

4. It should provide the knowledge, skills, and abilities for those who decide not to pursue a clinical career as well as those who do. This year, employees at the LinkedIn Top Companies grew their skills in AWS (up 42%), Python (up 25%), and machine learning (up 23%)—all skills that are driving innovation in nearly every industry, including sickcare. Employees also focused on building skills to collaborate effectively with their colleagues in home offices around the world like Jira (up 31%) and Scrum (up 15%).

5. It should use contemporary adult learning techniques and educational technologies

6. It should strive to graduate all students with an entrepreneurial mindset and not limit the objectives to creating a company, but, rather creating user defined value through the deployment of innovation using a VAST business model In other words, we need more entrepreneurial medical schools.

7. It should attempt to solve these problems in medical education

8. It should prepare students to win the 4th industrial revolution

9. It should include faculty development and a plan to train the trainers

10. It should be integrated into similar undergraduate and postgraduate innovation and entrepreneurship programs.

11. It should satisfy the needs of the multiple medical education stakeholders

12. It should be equitably accessible at an affordable price

13. Programs should partner and collaborate with their regional innovation ecosystems

14. Faculty should should have incentives to participate and be rewarded for the scholarship of innovation

15. International and interdisciplinary programs should share best practices and outcomes research

16. Faculty edupreneurs should practice what they teach and teach what they practice

17. End unpaid internships with startups

For a four year curriculum, learning benchmarks could be:

1. Year 1:Remembering and understanding (recall); courses, workshops, seminar, etc
2. Year 2: Applying and analyzing (interpretation): journal club, problem based learning, M/M conferences, Grand Rounds
3. Year 3: Evaluating (problem solving): internships and industry project assignments and knowledge transfer programs
4. Year 4: Creating (innovating): capstone entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship project based learning and Demo Day

As an example, a ten week first year , 2 one- hour sessions a week introductory course might include modules in :

1. Introduction to physician innovation and entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship
2. Design thinking, problem seeking and value proposition design
3. How to create and validate a business model canvas
4. How to test your business ideas
5. Intellectual property
6. Regulatory affairs
7. Reimbursement
8. Financing your new venture
9. Life science innovation design, development and deployment maps
10. How to overcome the barriers to dissemination and implementation

The challenges facing dermatology and healthcare in general needs more physicians that are trained in entrepreneurship. The rapid proliferation of disruptive technology present imminent challenges to physicians that a traditional basic and clinical sciences education does not address. As of 2016, only thirteen medical schools have acted on that notion, offering entrepreneurship certificates, concentrations and paths of excellence across seven educational themes: innovation, entrepreneurship, technology, leadership, healthcare systems, business of medicine, and enhanced adaptability.

BEET trends are accelerating and we are likely to see an increasing number of programmatic efforts by this time next year. Outcome metrics will take time to define and measure, but, the sooner we do so , the sooner we will know if and how medical student and resident innovation and entrepreneurship education and training has an impact on the quintuple aims.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs