An IOM Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education will be established to convene stakeholders to engage in dialogue and discussion that will illuminate contemporary issues in health professional education and to create an ongoing, innovative mechanism to incubate and review new ideas. This incubator mechanism or "innovation collaborative" will be multi-disciplinary and global. Taking inspiration from the 2010 RWJ-IOM Future of Nursing report and the 2010 Lancet Commission report on interdependent health professional education for the 21st century, the Forum will have the task of applying an ongoing, multi-national, multi-disciplinary approach to proposing and exploring promising innovations for achieving recommended reforms in the instructional and institutional spheres. The members of the forum will represent US and foreign government agencies and programs; leaders of US and foreign health professional associations; foundations with a stake in health and higher education; international non-governmental organizations; medical, dental, pharmacy, and public health schools; relevant researchers; nursing, medical, dental, and public health student leaders; industry stakeholders; and include representatives from each major region of the world. The Forum will use two to three major workshops per year to inform its meetings, one to highlight issues, perspectives, or innovations relevant primarily to higher income countries, one to highlight subject matter more relevant to a lower income country, and, if resources allow, one to focus on global interdependency in education and workforce development.

The IOM Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education will be based on the typical IOM forum platform but also have coordinating an innovation collaborative element as a complementary function. In parallel with the Forum itself and its convening functions, a goal will be to establish four linked, self-funded, university-based innovation clusters, one in the US or Canada, one in Latin America, one in Africa, and one in Asia. These innovation clusters will each represent formal partnerships between at least three institutions: a medical school, a nursing school, and a public health school. Each of these clusters will undertake a different self-determined and self-funded two year program of innovative curricular and institutional development that specifically responds to one of the recommendations in the Lancet Commission or the IOM Future of Nursing reports. Periodic reports from the innovation clusters will be made during forum meetings and related workshops.