Doing More with Less
It seems wherever we turn today, cuts to services and programs continue to go south, affecting the lives of all of us. This couldn’t be more true than what we are witnessing with unprecedented changes by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal agency responsible for protecting the health of the public. Take the recent decisions by the CDC to change recommendations for vaccinations that for centuries have kept children healthy and safe. Or the CDC’s shift to dietary changes like the recommendation for whole milk consumption, ignoring the science on the benefits of low-fat diets. We are not alone with these events. In May of 2025, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus commented on the fate of global health when the U.S. withdrew from WHO. He commented, “We are living through the greatest disruption to global health financing in memory”. These changes affect many systemic areas of health care, leading to the lack of access to medical knowledge, particularly in low and middle-income countries, the lack of efforts to build a qualified workforce, and the loss of momentum for novel treatment discoveries.
In the recently published article in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Global Orthopedics Education: Doing More with Less, we make the case that “the current climate creates an opening for more concerted efforts in making use of digital education tools to strengthen the knowledge base of the orthopedic workforce”. We point out that the COVID-19 pandemic catapulted digital education, particularly for institutions that already had an online infrastructure. And while there are numerous challenges to digital education for more hands-on training in specialties like orthopedics, lessons learned have taught us that digital education has evolved as a critical strategy for medical education. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) implemented a cloud-based learning system in 2025 that has 50 competency-based online courses for residents and fellows. And the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) reported in 2025 for the 2024 operating year, that there is a continued demand for digital online learning with growth exceeding from the previous year. They also noted the evolution to online education programs that support “deep flexible engagement with specialized topics”.
While current changes to our health infrastructure may seem insurmountable, digital education provides opportunities to ensure knowledge exchange and ultimately consistent and effective patient care. There are limits to technology that challenge us as educators to ensure the integrity of the knowledge we impart. It does take resources to build and maintain digital learning, but when established, the foundation allows for rapid program growth and the opportunity to reach a larger number of learners. Another challenge is the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence, the double-edged sword to progress that is one of the biggest hurdles in front of us today. However, as we continue to evolve online learning with all of its challenges, it is one of the most real-time tools we have to transfer medical knowledge at a time of the reduction of more traditional learning resources.
More information can be found in the recent publication, Global Orthopedics Education: Doing More with Less, Robbins L, Bostrom M, Llinas A, http://dx.doi.org/10.2106/JBJS.25.00443.
Laura
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