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AAMC Files Brief Supporting U-Michigan Admissions Policy AAMC Panel Defining Physician Roles Within Bioterrorism Education Innovations in Medical Education: "Teaching - and Learning - Through Collaboration" Wanted: More Anatomy Instructors Viewpoint: Avoiding Faculty Burnout A Word from the President "A Day in the Life of a Medical Student"
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A Word From the PresidentAMCAS®: Lessons Learned the Hard Way
The electronic version of AMCAS was supposed to greatly benefit students by permitting them to submit and monitor their applications via the Web, and to greatly assist our schools by allowing them to receive completed and verified applications electronically that they could process locally in whatever manner they chose. Instead, students and medical schools participating in AMCAS 2002 experienced all sorts of snafus, including repeated glitches, slow performance, missing data, and more. As a former dean and former chair of a medical school admissions committee, I was painfully aware of the anxiety and frustration that our constituents experienced at our behest. The AAMC responded to this crisis by quickly mounting a two-pronged attack: first, to stabilize the performance of AMCAS 2002 (which I'll call Version 1.0) to ensure acceptable utility for as long as necessary and, second, to begin from scratch to re-engineer AMCAS (Version 2.0) using a more robust, proven methodology for software development. Stabilizing Version 1.0 of AMCAS proved to be a Herculean task. No project in the association's history has involved more staff, more collaboration, more late nights and weekends, more cold pizza, or more dedication. And no project has benefited more from the expertise of our constituents. Early in the process, we assembled a Senior Management Advisory Committee comprising constituents with intimate knowledge both of the admissions process and of information technology; their oversight and advice proved indispensable. But special thanks must go to the countless individuals in the 115 medical schools and programs that participate in AMCAS. With their patience and understanding, we managed not only to struggle through the 2002 cycle but, I'm happy to report, to greatly improve the process for the current, 2003 cycle. Indeed, the application process for the class entering next fall has gone comparatively smoothly. Our original vision of a truly cutting-edge application service must, however, await the implementation of AMCAS Version 2.0. What's in the offing are tools that not only meet the highest functional standards expected of a premier service but that also require less maintenance and technical support. Whatever problems do occur, AMCAS staff should be able to fix quickly and without the need for additional work by the schools. Key to achieving these goals have been the many Web-based and in-person demonstrations of the new system as it has progressed through the iterative design process. Large numbers of end users and stakeholders have been actively consulted, and their feedback has been incorporated into the evolving software. Progress has been steady, and Version 2.0 is nearing completion. We decided early on, however, not to work toward a deadline, but rather to continue working until we had a fully satisfactory and fully tested set of tools that could be put into "production" with confidence. In keeping with that philosophy, we made the decision to delay the launch of the fully re-engineered AMCAS until the 2005 application cycle. This timetable will give us ample time for both in-house and field-testing and for training AAMC staff and school personnel. In the interim, that is, for next year's application cycle, we will continue to rely on the now stabilized, albeit still somewhat fragile, Version 1.0. Our experience with the transition of AMCAS from its traditional format to its present incarnation, painful as it has been, has taught us many important lessons. Among them are these:
Although we paid a high price - and not just in dollars - for these lessons, I can say with great confidence that your association has emerged from the AMCAS debacle as a much stronger organization. Not to say that we will never again confront a breakdown in one of our key services. But given what we've learned and the many process improvements that we've made, the likelihood of a similar mishap taking place in the future will be substantially reduced. For all our sakes, I certainly hope so!
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Contact Us © 1995-2008 AAMC Terms and Conditions Privacy Statement |
As
many of you know, the AAMC made a fateful decision in 1998 to abandon
its tried-and-true, paper-based format for the American Medical
College Application Service (AMCAS) in favor of a modern, highly
sophisticated, totally electronic system. That decision, which was
very much in keeping with the association's commitment to provide
timely, efficient, and improved services to constituents, was, unfortunately,
taken without sufficient under- standing of the risks associated
with abruptly switching an elaborate, complex set of processes from
paper to electrons. Despite having set aside several years for planning
and development before implementing the new system, its introduction
for the 2002 medical school application cycle was, to say the least,
disappointing. 