Computer Science: The Third Pillar of Medical Education

Frank Lau, Lindsay Katona, Joseph M. Rosen, Charles Everett Koop

Department of Surgery, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, USA.
Department of Surgery,Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, USA.
Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA.
Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/ce.2012.326120                

Abstract

In 2001, The Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) attributed substantial problems in the quality of American medicine to four domains: growing complexity of science and technology; the increase in chronic conditions; a poorly organized delivery system; and constraints on exploiting the revolution in information technology (IT). Although all of these domains have been improved by IT systems within the last decade, the U.S. health care systems has been slow to adopt these developments. We propose one way to combat such quality problems by incorporating a medicine-specific computer science (CS) curriculum as the third of Abraham Flexner’s pillars of medical education.

Keywords

Information Technology; Computer Science; Medical Education

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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