Medicine is changing rapidly in the face of technology and innovation. Today’s medical students must not only keep up with these changes, they should be prepared to take a leading role.
Here with a solution is the Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship Honors Track (MIEHT), available to medical students in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Medicine. With progressively intensive training in innovation and entrepreneurship complementing their four years of medical school, these students will learn to approach the clinical environment as problem-solvers and change-makers.
John Sherrill, Ph.D., MPH, senior licensing associate at BioVentures and track director for MIEHT, said to imagine the potential impact that entrepreneurially minded physicians could have if they were taught to view healthcare with an eye for innovation from the start.
“We train medical students to do needs assessments of patients,” Sherrill said. “But we don’t teach them to do the same type of needs assessment for the larger practice of medicine. While, as a practicing physician, you will impact hundreds of lives, maybe thousands of lives, but if you can make a bigger impact through innovation and entrepreneurship, you have the potential to impact tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives.”
MIEHT welcomed its first five students this year in the summer after their first year of medical. Through trainings, exercises and guest speakers, they learned basic entrepreneurial principles and began learning how to spot and evaluate problems – a skill that Sherrill hopes they will take with them wherever they go. They were also primed to consider financial benefits to the health system and how to present solutions to administrators.
“They’re new to the practice of medicine, which is a great time to introduce these concepts,” Sherrill said. “They haven’t been around long enough to have the attitude, ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it.’ When they see a problem, they’re going to ask, ‘Why?’”
By the third and fourth years of their medical training, they will be heading into clinical rotations. MIEHT will teach them to identify real-world problems and perform semi-
quantitative analyses. A fourth-year elective rotation will give them the time and support to work on solutions.
“It will be student driven,” Sherrill said, noting that the students have diverse interests in everything from device and software development to largescale public health issues. “They can apply the skills they learn in MIEHT to the specific areas they are passionate about.”
However, as they put what they learn into practice, Sherrill will advise them to not get too focused on any single solution. Adaptability is a better skill.
“It’s all about the problem,” Sherrill said. “I encourage students to fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Once innovators fully understand the problem, they iterate on potential solutions.”
A Chancellor’s Circle Grant Award from UAMS provided $10,000 in initial support to launch the program in 2023, including funding for technology and a stipend for the students. Otherwise, the program is funded by in-kind support from BioVentures LLC., the tech transfer office for UAMS.
Looking forward, Sherrill hopes to partner with other colleges across campus to offer versions of the program.
“We’re educating some of the brightest minds in the state and country every year in our colleges,” Sherrill said. “Why would we not offer this extra skillset to them?”
Students will continue to enter the program on a rolling basis. Recruiting for the program will occur around December each year. For more information, contact Sherrill at JSHERRILL@uams.edu.
