The medicine of the 21st century is moving from the “one-size-fits-most” practice to a targeted personalized approach, tailored to the specific characteristics and needs of an individual. The rapidly changing field of medicine and healthcare increasingly adopts scientific and technological innovations, making interdisciplinary collaborations especially important. The implications of these changes for medicine and the key components of successful interdisciplinary programs are discussed in Prof. Michel Goldman’s «Education in Medicine: Moving the Boundaries to Foster Interdisciplinarity».

In his Field Grand Challenge for Frontiers in Medicine, Prof. Michel Goldman emphasized the importance of translational medicine to interdisciplinary collaborations.

 “Translational medicine can be defined as the interdisciplinary science that will cover this continuum, from basic research to preclinical and clinical research, development of new medicines and medical devices, and ultimately patient-centric care.”

As medicine becomes increasingly interlinked with other fields, medical education needs also to evolve towards a more interdisciplinary approach.  Prof. Goldman highlighted the need for a new taxonomy of diseases, novel trial designs, adapted regulatory policies and guidelines and patient-centricity as essential components of medical education.

“Collaboration between healthcare stakeholders will be essential to address the complex scientific, regulatory, societal and economic challenges related to precision medicine. This will require reconciling and aligning the interests of private for-profit companies and publicly funded not-profit institutions around patients’ needs and expectations.”

As a peer-reviewed open access journal, Frontiers in Medicine provides a venue for researchers and practitioners to publish and access latest research in different medical disciplines and is currently expanding to broaden the focus by including new sections on regulatory science, precision medicine and translational medicine. Authors are encouraged to submit their latest work for international dissemination of scientific medical advances and to contribute to growing public understanding of the new directions in the field of medicine and healthcare. Most importantly, you, the authors, will benefit from the input of the most qualified editors from Frontiers in Medicine, to help you improve your papers to reach out to an even wider audience.

Oksana Parylo, PhDJournal Operations AssistantFrontiers in Medicinemedicine.editorial.office@frontiersin.org