Last month was the formal start of the Harvard Medical School Information Technology Initiative, which aims to deliver by the end of December a plan for fundamental changes in the School's use of digital technology.

"We are in an age where IT [information technology] has become central to all aspects of the School's mission and will be a major catalyst for advances in education, research, and patient care," says Medical School Dean Joseph B. Martin. "I believe it is time to initiate a process that brings together a broad group of leaders to think strategically about information technology, craft a long-term vision, and outline efforts we should consider near-term."

Martin will make a formal announcement of near-term projects to support research computing, student computing, and curricular efforts for third- and fourth-year medical students at a March 31 retreat that will bring together all the committees involved in the initiative.

The Dean oversees the program and serves as chair of its executive and policymaking group, the Strategy Committee, cochaired by Michael Rosenblatt, Harvard faculty dean for academic programs at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital. At the heart of the initiative are seven planning committees (see sidebar), each one focusing on a broad content area. These committees will generate specific recommendations, gleaned from faculty members active in their area. The chairs of the planning committees make up the majority of the Strategy Committee, which held an initial meeting on Feb. 12. For a national perspective, the Strategy Committee will rely on a group of outside advisers from the corporate and nonprofit sectors.

Since the content-area themes drive the initiative and most of the planning committees are chaired by faculty, the initiative is faculty driven and faculty led, says Daniel Moriarty, associate dean for information technology. Every theme addresses the HMS-affiliated institutions in some way.

Identifying Core Projects

The initiative does more than buff up the many network-based projects under way at HMS. It represents a "phase shift" in the School's use of digital technology. The time is right to engage the leadership of the whole school, says Moriarty, to identify a range of core IT projects that should be supported and implemented across the system.

As Moriarty tells it, the initiation and implementation of information technology has gone from a centralized model with mainframe and minicomputers that lasted into the 1980s, to a decentralized model with the coming of microcomputers that began in the mid-1980s. Now the model is local initiation and broad implementation based on common standards, which became possible in the 1990s with the growth of networks and Web technology.

"We can have our cake and eat it, too," Moriarty says, "because we can support local efforts that are linked." He believes that this cascade of changes will be more extensive than the one begun by PCs in the '80s.

At HMS, the new IT Initiative represents a transition to this third stage of growth. The program has four phases: Preplanning -- identifying content areas and recruiting leadership; Assessment -- planning committees enumerating local opportunities and making recommendations; Review -- screening recommendations for technical feasibility, cost, common infrastructure requirements, sequence, and overlap; and Approval -- Strategy Committee setting overall priorities, accepting recommendations, and establishing governance structure and financing strategy.

-- Robert Neal