INTEGRATING LEARNING HEALTH SYSTEMS INTO MEDICAL EDUCATION 1 Integrating Learning Health Systems into Medical Education

The original concepts behind learning health systems (LHS) were meant to address myriad concerns within the field of Western medicine, ranging from the high cost of healthcare (and resulting need for clinicians to provide greater overall value of care to their patients) to the wasteful gap of time between scientific innovations and their implementation within clinical environments. Although LHS have displayed much promise, and have begun to hasten the pace at which new insights can be put into real-time medical practice, they have faced significant stumbling blocks along the way. The reasons for this slow progress revolve around the ways in which LHS demand that clinicians learn not only new skills, but also new ways of thinking and making inquiries. In this arena, clinicians entering the workforce for the first time have a distinct advantage. They learn the basic philosophy and applications of LHS as a part of their baseline training, without needing to unlearn ingrained mental habits that are the result of old practice models. The influx of a new generation of clinicians promises to expedite the growth of LHS into a universal standard.