Education & Training

Education is part of the Mayo Clinic culture. Our team has a passion for lifelong learning as part of clinical practice.

The Center for Individualized Medicine educates members of the health care team and patients about personalized or genomics medicine and its implications in practice.

Our team takes a comprehensive approach to developing curriculum and methods for integrating individualized or personalized medicine into Mayo's education programs. The goal is to train current and future members of the health care team in providing personalized medicine to patients.

Programs for medical professionals

Lectures, mentored experiences, presentations and courses in genomics, pharmacogenomics, bioinformatics, epigenomics and microbiomics are available via:

• Residencies and fellowships. Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education has more than 1,500 trainees and offers nearly 300 programs in virtually every medical specialty. When appropriate, these programs include an individualized medicine rotation or component tailored to the specialty.
• Clinician-Investigator Program. The Clinician-Investigator Program provides two years of mentored research training for individuals in a Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education clinical residency or fellowship. Several positions are available in the program each year, with individualized medicine as a focus area for one or two investigators each year.
• Career development awards. The Center for Individualized Medicine's Gerstner Family Career Development Awards promote a specialized workforce for individualized medicine discovery, translation and application. The awards aid exceptional young investigators at Mayo Clinic who are committed to individualized medicine research, with the goal of helping them establish their credentials as highly productive researchers.
• Graduate courses. Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences provides advanced scientific training in biomedical research. Scientific courses, conferences, seminars and journal clubs offer training in how the biological sciences support and enhance the practice of individualized medicine.
• Medical school courses. By integrating genomics into its curriculum, Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine educates and prepares medical students to be physician leaders in individualized medicine who are able to blend the art and science of genomics into their chosen area of practice.
• Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) provides an opportunity for undergraduates interested in a research career to work with established investigators conducting original biomedical research. Opportunities are available to explore research in genomics, pharmacogenomics, biomarker discovery, imaging and many more areas.
• Education collaboration. We partner with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to offer students and staff the opportunity to explore bioinformatics analysis and interpretation in order to advance individualized medicine research and practice.
• Continuous professional development courses. Through hundreds of courses, both live and Web based, Mayo Clinic School of Continuous Professional Development weaves the practice of individualized medicine into its comprehensive selection of clinical, surgical and research courses. Each course is designed to assist physicians and other care providers with the ongoing challenge of rapidly understanding and integrating the newest medical knowledge and advanced treatments, including genomics, into practice.
• Grand Rounds. On a regular basis, our center leaders provide presentations at Grand Rounds (must be logged into the Mayo network) that provide exceptional education value to others in the area of individualized medicine. These video presentations are available to students, patients and others.
• Publications. Our team lectures and publishes extensively on the topic of individualized medicine. This method of education is an effective venue for our experts to share their knowledge with health care providers around the world. Other Mayo Clinic publications for medical professionals offer insights on the applications of individualized medicine in different practice areas.
• Individualizing Medicine Conference. Annually, the Individualizing Medicine Conference offers expert speakers, focused breakout sessions, real-life case studies and a poster session — an exciting forum to discover and discuss emerging topics in applied genomics.

Education integrated in practice

Providing education for our team at Mayo Clinic is vital to advancing the understanding and practice of genomics in personalized medicine.

As part of this comprehensive approach, the Center for Individualized Medicine is developing education and training for health care providers and patients about new tools and applications implemented in clinical practice. Ongoing implementation research helps us study the systematic adoption of educational interventions and enhance effectiveness.

Education and training developed by the center for our health care team include:

• Real-time access to clinical decision-support rules in the electronic medical record regarding drug-gene rules
• Point-of-care decision aids used in genomic counseling sessions to help patients make decisions about information and results they want to learn from their genomic testing
• Online training modules in areas such as pharmacogenomics and magnetic resonance elastography
• Website providing information for our patients, collaborators and scientists, including animations and videos to bring genomics to life
• Individualized Medicine Blog and community advisory board to engage the public in understanding personalized medicine, asking questions and sharing concerns

Contact

For more information about the education and training programs in the Center for Individualized Medicine, please contact us.

Program leader

• Timothy B. Curry, M.D., Ph.D.
  • Director