If the University of Illinois really wants to make a positive difference, proponents of a new medical school on campus are showing how.

A public medical partnership between the University of Illinois and the Carle Medical System may be a gleam in the eyes of the plan's proponents, but it's still one of the most exciting proposals to come along in years.

Much work including raising vast sums of money must be done before this ambitious undertaking comes close to getting off the ground. But the possibilities of this partnership training needed doctors, mind-bending research linking medicine, science and engineering, expanding Carle's footprint as a destination hospital, vast economic expansion are unlimited. Most important, they represent a rush to embrace a future that will be here before people know it.

UI Chancellor Phyllis Wise has spoken repeatedly about the need to think and dream big. This proposal to create a new medical school linking the UI and Carle, one outlined in a consultant's report that was long in the making, outlines in real-world terms that ambition and what will be required to fulfill it.

They range from very real concern about raising the money $100 million for a new building and $200 million for an endowment to a potential UI turf battle between local administrators who want a campus medical school and the UI's Chicago campus that already has one.

At the risk of getting the cart before the horse, the consulting firm Tripp Umbach recommends immediately choosing a name for this new entity to avoid confusion with the current University of Illinois-Chicago College of Medicine, developing a business plan and financial model by September and filing an application for accreditation by the end of the year.

By 2015, the consultant's report recommends hiring a dean, one with a national reputation in "engineering and science-driven medicine," to oversee the institution's founding. By 2016, the tentative plan is to hire a distinguished faculty with the first incoming class to follow the next year.

That kind of warp speed may not be possible, but suggestions that it is re-emphasize just how serious local UI administrators are about creating a new institution that melds practical medical training with groundbreaking research in a way that could touch the lives of many thousands of people.

It remains to be seen what UI trustees think about the plan. UI President Robert Easter said only that "it's an idea that's on the table," one that must go through the traditional layers of review before it's sent to the UI and Carle boards for a final decision.

Not surprisingly, many questions remain. Concepts are one thing: the administrative outline how an institution like this would operate on a day-to-day basis is quite another.

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Embracing the future