It is hard to believe that 10 years have elapsed since I first came to Johns Hopkins. I consider myself so fortunate to work at this world-class institution. The reason it is world-class is its incredible workforce. I am extraordinarily appreciative of the faculty, staff and learners of Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM), all of whom have made my experience so memorable and remarkable.
On page 18 of this issue, you can review details of the many outstanding JHM achievements I have been privileged to witness during my tenure as dean and CEO over the last 10 years.
I consider our infrastructure improvements to be critical as they support all three parts of our mission. From our unprecedented two strategic plans to the rapid physical growth of our medical campuses, we have created new ways to ensure our institution’s success and sustainability. Our move toward digitalization has been a key infrastructure enhancement that is less obvious than physical buildings. The massive multiyear implementation of Epic allowed us to integrate operations, improve care and move toward our goal of acting as a single organization by ensuring that clinicians at different Johns Hopkins locations had the same patient information and were operating with the same protocols and best practices. Another gain from Epic was our ability to create a precision medicine approach to research and treatment, where data are used to target specific therapies to specific patients. InHealth, our Precision Medicine effort, continues to grow. We are just beginning to realize the potential for big data and our Precision Medicine Centers of Excellence, but their impact on research, and ultimately, on improving clinical care, will be tremendous.
Targeting and tailoring clinical care to the patient is the wave of the future, and in education we are also finding ways to customize programs for our students and trainees. Our cross-disciplinary graduate programs, new curriculums and house staff training programs ensure that our learners gain the experiences and knowledge they will need as they begin their careers as physicians and physician-scientists. Our current and future generations of physician-scientists and basic scientists have state-of-the-art research facilities to enjoy, with more research space on the way.
Over the past two years we have gone into great detail in this magazine’s pages about how Johns Hopkins Medicine has risen to meet the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through working as one institution, we have been able to tailor our responses as the pandemic evolved and changed. My pride in our efforts to keep patients and staff members safe is difficult to adequately express.
Johns Hopkins Medicine joined our global society in facing difficult challenges over the last several years. As a result of these circumstances, the world now better appreciates the value of academic medicine, and the importance of the intersection of patient care, education and research.
My time as dean and CEO is drawing to a close, but I feel confident that Johns Hopkins Medicine is well-positioned to face the challenges that are sure to arise in the future. I am humbled by the opportunity to serve this institution, and remain forever grateful to everyone across the enterprise — faculty, staff, students and patients — who have made these past 10 years life-changing.
The best is yet to come!
