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The Michigan Difference

The academic medical research institution occupies an important place in American society.

Its core missions are vital to the future well-being of its citizenry. They include:

• Educating physicians and medical scientists
• Discovering new medical knowledge
• Developing innovative technologies for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease; and
• Providing health care in an academic setting

It is within the leading academic medical institutions that:

• The nation’s goals to discover new medical knowledge and to develop innovative technologies are primarily realized
• The best new ways of providing patient care are developed
• The medical leaders of the next generation are developed

Medical School Commencement Photo: Martin Vloet

The University of Michigan Health System, with its historical and present stature as one of the first and best academic medical institutions in America, is one of those institutions which the state, the Midwest, the nation and the world depend upon for the future progress of medicine.

It is the intellectual interchange between people in their various roles at a great academic medical institution that leads to new learning and the birth of new ideas. At the University of Michigan, there are literally hundreds and thousands of men and women who have helped change the world by virtue of the experiences they shared at Michigan and the ideas that grew out of those experiences.

As Robert Bartlett so generously noted in 2002 when he was awarded the American Surgical Association’s prestigious Medallion for Scientific Achievement, “Hundreds of people at the U-M deserve credit for this award. The University provides a unique environment which supports laboratory and clinical research – and the clinical practice – which makes this type of scientific progress possible.”

The Michigan Difference as it relates to medicine in the 21st century is about ideas, about people intensely dedicated to using those ideas to make the world a better place.