he Woodruff Health Sciences Center (WHSC) has three interrelated core missions: to provide the best in health care services, to train top-notch, dedicated health professionals, and to pioneer in basic and clinical research that expands our knowledge base and improves health. These three missions have guided our work and that of other academic health centers for almost a century, encompassing an extraordinary range of painstaking, pathbreaking, and patient-centered work by faculty, students, and staff. Yet, while our core missions have remained relatively stable, academic health centers today increasingly are affected by two major societal forces: rapid development of new technologies and new realities of the managed care marketplace. These forces present a host of new challenges and opportunities. They call out for individual initiative and innovation - solving problems rather than simply raising them. This issue of Momentum explores several key areas in which new technologies and the new marketplace are giving rise to initiatives that enhance or extend our core missions.

From the Director  /  Letters From Mind to Market Emory Start-Ups and Licensees Grow West, Entrepreneur Preparing for the Year 2000 Cardiac Pathways Learning On-line Moving Forward  /  Noteworthy A Question of Service Cap Worn Around the World

One such area is technology transfer. For most of this century, academic researchers and clinician scientists worked in relative isolation from those in the private sector who undertook to bring medical innovations to the marketplace. Now virtually all academic centers have technology transfer programs, and facilitating development of new technologies is an important focus of university-based scientists. The ball is in the entrepreneur's court.   Along these same lines, one of the most challenging difficulties in technology transfer is the initial step of taking a promising idea from the lab bench into early stages of feasibility assessment, refinement, and testing, prior to full-fledged commercial development. This process of "incubating" new technologies has been most successful in areas of the country that have developed a critical mass of leading research institutions and scientists, individuals, and firms involved in risk-taking venture capital funding and experienced entrepreneurial leadership. Emory and Georgia Tech have agreed to create a biotechnology development center, which will join other university initiatives and programs at "Emory West."   We are extending our technological capabilities in other directions as well. Also profiled is an innovative distance learning program at the Rollins School of Public Health that is extending the reach of our professional education resources and opportunities.   No discussion of technology these days can avoid the looming issue of the Y2K bug. We explore this issue as it affects critical systems of the WHSC and describe the high-priority steps we are taking to ensure a smooth millennial transition.   Of course not everything we do revolves around technology. Sometimes our most important efforts involve taking stock of how we operate - literally as well as figuratively. The cardiac surgery pathways developed at Emory and Crawford Long hospitals are models of initiative, innovation, and excellence for others to follow.   At the very core of what we do is the need for collegiality and responsiveness in our work with one another to achieve our common missions and goals. Our "On Point" essay addresses continuing challenges we face in improving referral and related professional service systems. Initiative, innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, and collegiality. All of these are critical to our work and to the continuing success of the WHSC in these challenging times. As always, should you find Momentum anything less than a useful and compelling resource, I hope you will let me and our editors know. Michael M. E. Johns