Information technology, medical education, and anatomy for the twenty-first century

Medicine is experiencing an escalating explosion of information. With more data available about more topics, the key questions are how to access and make sense of the medical information jungle. Skill in choosing and applying information is essential for both medical education and practice and will require new approaches to mastering data. Medical education, like medicine itself, will continue to be driven by technology, and we can expect our students to be increasingly computer literate. Thus the role of medical education will become more one of how to use this information than of obtaining the information itself. What medical education must focus on is the processing of information for appropriate medical care. This, in turn, depends upon practitioners having contexts in which the relevance and significance of information can be evaluated. New imaging technologies and molecular advances demand a broader understanding of both health and disease. With the information explosion "on line," how can a student use this to understand the structure and function of the human body in four dimensions? Anatomy, the structural basis for life, provides a unique and necessary perspective on the human body from the molecular to the macroscopic. A solid foundation in anatomy is the best preparation for an effective physical examination and for safe, efficient basic clinical procedures. Finally, anatomy laboratories provide a context for learning other important aspects of medicine-group process, clinical problem solving, and a sensitivity to human mortality. Advocating for these unique features of our discipline in medical education is the task facing anatomists as we end this millennium. The challenges and opportunities for us have never been greater, if we don't throw out the baby with the bath water.