omeday in the not-too-distant future, patients will reap the benefits of major biomedical advances developed at Emory - new vaccines, drugs that correct gene defects, home-based diagnostic tests, bioimaging enhanced by gene-specific probes, real-time medical records, secure data on the World Wide Web, and interactive TV between patient and health care provider. It's not pie in the sky, says David Blake, associate director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center and vice president for academic health affairs. Emory is perfectly positioned to be at the forefront of research that will make these futuristic models become reality. But to get there, Emory first must have a strategic plan. Blake defines strategic planning as a process that leads to a blueprint or general agreement throughout the organization as to how to acquire and deploy resources. His experience with strategic planning dates back to his early days as vice dean at Johns Hopkins, when he and then medical school dean Michael Johns visited other top medical schools to learn how they were structured. "We met a consultant at Harvard who said the first thing we needed to do is strategic planning," Blake remembers. He was initially skeptical. "But after completing our own plan at Hopkins and seeing its impact, I have to say that strategic planning is the most powerful organizational tool you can use to achieve any mission." Its significance is not so much the product, the documents, or the lists, he emphasizes. It's the process that you go through to get those things. "A strategic plan allows you to sit and look a powerful department chair in the eyes and say, 'We can't do that because it's inconsistent with the plan.' If the plan says we should be promoting multidisciplinary programs both in research and education yet there's a request for a department to expand in ways that have no multidisciplinary character whatsoever, the answer is real simple: You just don't do it if it requires new resources." Blake comes to Emory with a track record of making things happen. As a pharmacologist, educator, and investigator at Johns Hopkins, he became associate dean of research there after proposing (and later implementing) user-friendly, one-stop shopping for the grant application process. Later, as vice dean of the school of medicine, Blake helped move Hopkins into first place in sponsored research and developed a model technology transfer program. He has set his sights even higher at Emory.

"Emory has many strengths," he says, "but our weakness is comfort with second-tier status. It's not good enough to get a top ten candidate for department chair, you want to get number one, and if you don't, you need to understand why and what you could have done to get that person. You can never be better than your faculty." At Emory, Blake sees himself as a catalyst - "a component of the reaction that makes the reaction go faster without being consumed by the reaction" - with a mission to insure the implementation of the strategic plan at the health sciences center level. He works closely with Johns to support the deans and center directors in their research areas, helping them address overarching issues. Technology transfer is high on his list as a target for growth, and he will also help facilitate the further development of nontraditional programs at Emory. Those include telemedicine and consumer health and education, the latter exemplified by Emory's popular mini-medical school. Emory has the opportunity to become a pre-eminent institution in all our missions, Blake says. "By aligning the research enterprise and clinical delivery systems, I think we can develop a national health care model for research and for managed care here within a short time. We will attract the best and the brightest because people will know this place is pioneering new discoveries and new ways to take care of patients and prevent illness."

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