We appreciate Dr. Gozum's thoughtful, provocative response to the FCIM position paper [1]. The Council agrees with Dr. Gozum about the importance of medical informatics and accordingly cited "the large, ever-changing body of knowledge that intimidates students and residents into choosing careers in which they can limit the information base they must master." It also highlighted the need for more opportunities during medical school and residency training to gain experience in information appraisal—a term the Council used to emphasize the importance of developing skills in both medical informatics and the critical appraisal of clinical-scientific literature. Finally, as part of the recommendation to "foster the scholarly basis of general internal medicine," the Council encouraged more federal research support for educational sciences, a broad category that also encompasses medical informatics.

Gozum's portrayal of medical informatics as a "panacea to medicine's organizational ills" is a concept the Council looks forward to debating because all member organizations of FCIM (American Board of Internal Medicine, American College of Physicians, American Society of Internal Medicine, Association of Professors of Medicine, Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine, Society of General Internal Medicine) are already involved in some activity related to medical informatics. In addition, if the Residency Review Committee for Internal Medicine's new Special Requirements are approved, medical informatics will be included in the training curriculum.

However, Dr. Gozum seems to have missed the three major points of the FCIM statement: first, the recognition of the essential need for the internal medicine community to come together and coordinate its efforts to resolve the imbalance of too few generalists and too many subspecialists in internal medicine; second, the identification of key recommendations proposed and agreed upon by that community; and third, the community's resolution and commitment to implement these recommendations.