Conference on future of medical education set for April 22-23

In its first year as a stand-alone conference, Stanford Medicine X|ED will focus on how to increase diversity among health care workers and design new tools for their education.

- By Tracie White

Charles Prober, senior associate dean for medical education, speaks last year at Stanford Medicine X | ED, an event that focuses on the future of medical education.
Courtesy of Stanford Medicine X

Stanford Medicine X | ED, an academic conference on the future of medical education, will be held April 22-23 at the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

In its inaugural year as a stand-alone conference, the event will focus on how to increase diversity within the health care workforce and among medical educators, and the application of “precision education” — meeting the needs of future learners through new technology and tools, and personalized education.

The Medicine X | ED conference began two years ago as a part of the academic health-innovation conference Medicine X, but it has been spun off as a separate event this year.

“Medicine X aims to transform health care by elevating under-heard voices from its front-line stakeholders, including patients, caregivers, providers –– people with expertise to transform academic medicine from the bottom up,” said Lawrence Chu, MD, professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine at Stanford and founder and director of Medicine X. “We realized that in order to make real impactful change in health care, we needed to dedicate resources to reach the future leaders of tomorrow early enough to make a difference. Medicine X | ED is our answer to that unmet need.”

Examining ways to improve medical education

The conference will bring together a broad range of stakeholders in health care education — from patients, to providers, researchers, industry leaders, designers, technologists and medical educators. The goal is to examine new methods of improving medical education, organizers said.

“We challenge educators to examine medical education in the ways we look at medical treatment, where we use data and analytics to better understand the entire person in order to tailor the best therapy and treatments for an individual person — precision health,” Chu said. “This new concept, precision education, applies a similar notion to framing an educational experience, looking at a learner’s entire learning footprint — including how many times a learner interacts with an online learning management system, opens an email or webpage, quiz question, app, flash card.”

Keynote speakers at the conference will be:

  • Clay Johnson, MD, the inaugural dean of the new Dell Medical School at the University of Texas-Austin.
  • Dan Schwartz, PhD, dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the author of a new book, The ABC’s of How We Learn.
  • Neha Sangwan, MD, developer of a program for health care workers’ own care, a program she calls “self-care in health care.”
  • Erik Brodt, MD, a physician who works to improve Native American health and medical training, who will speak about using digital media storytelling to inspire American Indian youth.


Key events over the two-day event include:

  • Diversity 2.0 — a main stage breakout panel session focused on advancing the conversation on diversity and inclusion within medical education.
  • Patient-Centered Outcomes Research and Comparative Effectiveness Research — a main stage breakout session.
  • A main stage panel on the role of games in medical education.


Among the many workshops and learning labs, scheduled topics include design thinking for future doctors, integrating the expanding health care system, developing leadership and self-empowerment and games as a solution for medical training.

Registeration is available online.

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu.