Introduction

Veterinary leaders have been constantly investing in the future of veterinary education. Over the last 30 years, more than seven national studies on the future of veterinary education and many more action plans have been conducted. Those efforts are culminating now with the most comprehensive effort ever undertaken: The North American Veterinary Medical Education Consortium (NAVMEC), launched in 2009, and the action plan the Consortium is preparing.

Greater efficiency and effectiveness. Numerous experts have been stressing the need “to revisit and reorganize the delivery of veterinary education by making use of new collaborative technology for greater efficiency and effectiveness” (Bernardo, 2006) and to do so as soon as possible (Eyre,  2010).

Difference! What can make a big difference between previous plans and future ones is that now we have at our disposal the well-developed tools necessary to make it happen.

Customize. With these tools we can build an extremely powerful and customizable collaborative framework. It does not matter if we prefer a flat organization or a more structured one with a strong hierarchy, if we want focus on strong central or dispersed local development; it does not matter which business model we prefer – we can have it all. Perhaps most importantly, in each part of the network we can have a completely unique set of features – customized specifically for given country, school or even department or course --yet all those unique entities can work together, creating super-productive organization.