Biography:

Dr. Thomas Aretz is a member of PHI's senior management team focusing largely on academic programs and institutions, such as universities, medical schools and academic medical centers. He has worked in over 30 countries in the areas of curriculum reform, creation of new health sciences schools, leadership and faculty development, organizational development and healthcare systems consulting.

A native of Germany, Dr. Aretz was in the academic practice of cardiovascular pathology from 1981 to 2002. He was the course director of a major integrated medical school course at Harvard from 1992 to 2005. He is a Program Director for the Harvard Macy Institute, and has been involved in international programs since 1996. He holds a clinical appointment at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where he completed his post-doctoral training. He has served on many academic and hospital (IRB chairman) committees and industrial boards, and is the co-founder of three medical technology companies. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and is certified in anatomic and clinical pathology by the American Board of Pathology.

Dr. Aretz has lectured and published extensively and has received multiple teaching awards at Harvard Medical School and MGH. He has also won recognition for his efforts to improve medical education around the world through intra-institutional collaborations and education consulting. In 2006 he was named an "Ehrenbürger" (honorary citizen) of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich for his contributions to the long-standing PHI-LMU alliance. He was also recognized with a MILES Award (Mentoring, Innovation, and Leadership in Educational Scholarship), given by the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore for outstanding contributions to the advancement of global medical education and academic medicine. 

Overview and Learning Objectives:

In order to understand curriculum development, its interdependencies and the need for appropriate organizational structures, the session will explore the elements of systems and their interactions depending on the tasks to be accomplished. This discussion will aim to define the kind of organizational structures and overarching principles that need to be in place to guide complex systems, such as healthcare or educational institutions and programs, which allow them to use data and provide guidance and structure that foster autonomy and accountability. Basically, the session will emphasize that one type of structure does not fit all tasks, and that function should dictate structure giving concrete examples for various situations.

Program Objectives:

• Define elements of systems and their modes of interactions
• Discuss the levels and hierarchy of knowledge creation and what organizations need to do to build knowledge when compared to individuals
• Describe various types of organizational structures to assure acquisition and dissemination of knowledge across systems
• Explore how this might apply to specific challenges in healthcare education

Recommended Reading and Reference Materials:

• CP_100405_Valerdi_Rouse_IEEE.pdf  
• Mennin _2010.pdf  
• Fraser_Greenhalgh.pdf
• Mintzberg_Organgraphs.pdf
• plsek-complexity-challenge-in-hc.pdf