Academic Health Center Transformation: Future Shock or Future Success?

Academic health centers are vital institutions that are central to health and well-being. As noted in this book, a combination of societal, scientific, and economic forces are disrupting the traditional approaches to educating the next generation of health professions, conducting biomedical and clinical research, and providing comprehensive and advanced patient care. This chapter reviews the impact of these forces in three specific areas: interprofessional health professions education, the lab-based research investigator, and the impact of a changing health system. It then focuses on the challenges of successful leadership in this new era for academic health centers and concludes with some overarching guidelines for the path forward. As they lead in the transformation of health care, academic health centers must remain true to their underlying value proposition: applying knowledge to improve health and well-being and building the knowledge economy and applying it in patient care.