Dear Dr. Ellison

Dear Dr. Ellison, 

I understand you are leading an effort to create a Kaiser Medical School. I applaud your efforts to create a new paradigm for medical education and , with your permission, offer the following suggestions:

1. Make digital health and medical practice entrepreneurship a mandatory part of the curriculum

2. Incorporate these principles

3. Engage philanthropreneurs to support you

4. Offer free tuition

5. Hire physician educator entrepreneurs

6. Teach Coherentcare 

7. Make sure your entrepreneurial graduates take a residency instead of joining a startup

8. Change how you accept students and recruit for innovation

9. Recognize that innovative medical schools are not necessarily entrepreneurial medical schools.

10. Don't make those you fire do exit interviews.

Here are some ways to educate better medical student entrepreneurs:

1. Create bioentrepreneurship programs that are convenient, affordable and fit into the workflow of medical students and their curriculum.

2. Train the trainers by educating and training basic science and clinical faculty 

3. Use education models that are familiar, like Innovation Grand Rounds, Company Clinicopathologic Conferences and "see one, do one, teach one" strategies, emphasizing experiential learning under the supervision of "innovation attendings"

4. Emphasize the similarities between the clinical mindset and the entrepreneurial mindset

5. Integrate and include them into local innovation ecosystems

6. Expose them to sponsors, champions and mentors

7. Create opportunties for them to showcase their work or ways to practice presenting it and, thereby, practice their communication and emotional intelligence skills. For example, I recently attended a session where 4 science grad students and 4 business school students presented their ideas to each other as a way to improve their presentation skills and learn to speak to an audience not familiar with their terms and lingo.

8. Create a seed stage fund to reward medical students for their entrepreneurial efforts

9. Engage those with interest and help them create a personal and professional development plan that includes, hopefully, completing a residency and some reasonable exposure to clinical practice

10. Celebrate their accomplishments and showcase them to other medical student entrepreneurs around the world. Create Medical Student and Faculty Bioentrepreneur of the Year Awards, with a prize to support their entrepreneurial ventures, and include entrepreneurial activities as part of promotion and tenure evaluations.

Good luck with your new venture and please join us at The Society of Physician Entrepreneurs.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs