There are more than 1,600 medical schools worldwide, each with its own curriculum, training and evaluation methods, and accreditation processes. While there have been efforts to gather information on the characteristics of medical schools and the quality of their graduates, current and meaningful data are often inadequate, and these deficits have compromised research efforts aimed at better understanding how medical education impacts the health of society. If these informational gaps could be addressed, it would be possible to begin the task of determining how differences in medical education programs relate to the quality of their graduates and the adequacy of local health care systems.

In addition, physicians are crossing borders with increasing frequency to pursue graduate medical education and licensure outside the countries where they receive their medical education. As a result, the international community has sought accurate and up-to-date resources that provide basic information about the medical schools attended by these physicians.

To meet these needs, the Foundation decided to begin to construct data repositories that contain information on individual medical schools. The goal is for these repositories to contain both current and historical information and for them to be freely and easily accessible to medical educators and organizations concerned with credentialing and licensure. They are also intended to be an important resource for health care consumers and prospective medical school students.