Is it necessary to teach complexity sciences in medical schools?

The curriculum of a Medicine and Complexity course must be multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary given the richness of resources and perspectives that this novel science has that must (already is a must) instill in our medical school students

In my view, I do not think so

The current aims of medical curricula are to prepare graduates to join the medical force and to be competent and able to serve the patients and community using professional approaches. We focus on patient education and prevention of diseases, and we ensure that graduates understand research, use evidence in making decisions and are safe. I do not think complicated things is a priority.

Thanks Samy Azer for the reply. But complicated is not equal to complex. More now, facing the challenges of the coronavirus epidemic, it is imperative to teach the disciplines of complexity science to medical students. I share the following link that reinforces what I propose:

full disclosure: I have worked for half a century on complexity sciences so I warn of possible bias. However, I strongly think it should be included because there have proven to be, for a wide range of diseases, multiple causes and multiple effects. This suggests the diseased state (or relatively dtysfunctioning states) of our complex body systems cannot be understood ONLY by linear causes and effects. Thus, the medical student would learn something important about the humans they are caring for. Further, the phenomenon of pleiotropy, long known in genetics, must be widened in the medical sciences beyond the typical example of sickle cell anemia to alzheimers and the progeria's and joined by the new pleioetiology.

I agree with that. The linear does not describe reality in its universality

It is also necessary that the Sciences of Complexity expand their knowledge to the general public to "normalize" their use

Dear colleagues,

The very same question -- that is given by Nicolas Saa -- had arisen in my mind in 2015 while I started to work in biomedical research. My area of research is about biosignal classification, physiology, heart arrhythmias, and VT, VF, TdP predictions.

Due to my life long experience with complexity, design of models, programming, and evaluation of complex system descriptions of natural phenomena and due to substantial overview of the filed, I decided to contribute by sharing this knowledge and experience in the form that is tractable to a wide audience not familiar with massive parallel descriptive approaches. The fruit of this effort follows.

The following publications would be interesting to everyone who is interested in the principles, methods used, and applications of complexity in medicine. The field is exciting, very alive, and very fast developing!

Poster (five minutes of reading):

Paper (two hours of reading):

Those research outputs can save months or even years of your search through the research literature.

Good luck to all who want to participate in this exciting emerging field of mathematical research!

Jiri

Yes as a different approach to problem solving in relation to the mechanistic paradigm.The basics of chaos and complexity theory should be taught in all schools, not just the medical ones.

Thank you for your response. You might be right. However, is this complexity science is part of the course objectives priorities? Are we aiming in undergraduate medical curricula to graduate competent physiologists? Or competent pharmacologist? Or competent anatomist? Or competent forensic medicine? The answer none of these. We want them to join the medical force, to know the knowledge, skills, and behaviours to enable them to join the medical workforce. This is not any more personal views. We have comprehensive research in the literature in this area. Please read Academic Medicine, Medical Teacher, Medical Education, BMC Medical Education, Teaching and Learning in Medicine, plus documents from the Accreditation bodies in Australia, the UK, Canada, the USA and others.

Yes, in the old curriculum, they used to do this. There were no boundaries in the curriculum, no defined objectives, and each professor or head of a department teach what they like. This behaviour is not anymore in major universities.

Students also in the new curricula have a research project and they could go through research methodology etc. and may publish their work. But we have boundaries for the curriculum and guidelines set by the accreditation bodies for undergraduate medical curricula. In Germany, you have GMS Journal for Medical Education. It is instrumental in checking. If you need specific evidence on specific areas related to this, please let me know.

Excellent paper !! Medical knowledge integration and "systems medicine": Needs, ambitions, limitations and options.

There is a hyper-diversity of data and a poor "meta-theory" in Medicine

Johannes W. Dietrich thank you!!

Dear Miguel Enrique Sanchez-Hechavarria, you touched a very important aspect of the ways we gain knowledge in general. We create a scheme of thought -- paradigm -- and we stick to it.

From the history of science, we know that a paradigm is good in its early stages as it helps to build and discover new knowledge. Later, it becomes more of a burden because it slows down the creation of the next level paradigm.

We must be aware of these life-cycles of paradigms and scientific approaches.

The next level of medicine will be based on complexity approaches that will enable highly personalized, predictive medicine. This level requires the building of the relevant mathematical tools capable to define precisely the state of the system -- the body -- and to quantify it.

Once we get to quantifying tools capable of this, we can start to reveal all complicated pathways the living cells, tissues, organs, and bodies are governed.

We will hear more about complexity, complex measures, AI and machine learning, data mining in this context in the near future.

When you want to know more about Complexity in Medicine, you can try to follow the project

There is going to be presented a large number of complexity approaches, models, and theories in medicine.

You are welcomed there. :-)

I do appreciate the answers provided by the fellows