ACC.11 & i2 Summit 2011 marked ACC’s 60th annual scientific session. With 60 years of successful history, it would be easy to simply drift meeting to meeting, circling endlessly into the backwaters of irrelevance. Not so. The ACC remains determined to transform the education we offer at this meeting to keep up with tremendous advances in science and radically changing education strategies. These educational changes include: recognition of learner needs (wherein what is taught focuses on what the learner needs rather than what the teacher wants to teach); the urgent need to optimize quality medical care for all patients; and the burgeoning requirements for life-long learning.

Given how much is changing, I asked our ACC.12 Program Chairs, Rick Nishimura, MD, FACC, and Patrick O’Gara, MD, FACC, to take a hard look at our meeting to enable it to meet these new needs. They have responded by making key changes so that the meeting concentrates on:

1. Promoting the science;
2. Facilitating physician competence
3. Using alternative long-distance learning strategies
4. Collaborating with subspecialty societies within the family of cardiology; and
5. Using cutting-edge technology to more fully engage younger, more facile members who not only have mastered the new math but can also surf the Web.

The overarching goal of all these changes is to continue the transformation of education and science – the underpinnings of the ACC. As we think about how the College plays a central role in these areas, there is a triangle beginning with bits and bytes of information, that is then collated and synthesized into knowledge, which is then applied—along with individual and aggregate experience—as wisdom to treat the patient at hand.  ACC.12 will be unlike any ACC meeting seen before as we showcase and teach the art and science of reasoning. 

More about the changes planned for the meeting can be found in the July/August issue of Cardiology magazine, in an interview with Nishimura and O’Gara. The interview is on page 28 of the flipper. You can also read more in the President Page’s in JACC.