The Family Physicians Inquiries Network (FPIN) is a national, not-for-profit consortium of academic family physicians, family medicine residency programs and departments, medical librarians, informaticians, computer scientists, other primary-care providers and consultants dedicated to using information technology to improve healthcare.
FPIN represents an outstanding resource for family practice education programs by helping programs fulfill the ACGME competency requirements, by creating opportunities for residents and faculty to participate in scholarly activity through writing and reviewing of Clinical Inquiries for the Journal of Family Practice and the American Family Physician. FPIN is endorsed by AAFP, ADFM, AFMRD, AMDA, STFM and NAPCRG.
FPIN was conceptualized in May 1998 as part of a grant application to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) from the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU). FPIN was developed through the Center for Family Medicine Science at MU, a family practice research center funded by the AAFP. In April 2001 FPIN was incorporated as a self governing mutual benefit corporation completely independent of MU's Center for Family Medicine Science. MU became the first of the seven initial Founding Members. FPIN has thrived as a grassroots community of healthcare professionals driven to create a revolution in medicine.
FPIN Community
FPIN is a community of inclusion that is committed to engaging every organization and individual who wishes to join us in revolutionizing primary care practice. As the community grows with faculty physicians, resident physicians and practicing physicians each of us benefits from the contributions of practitioners asking questions, providing clinical perspective, and participating in research; scholars writing reviews of the evidence and publishing them in the FPIN Clinical Inquiries series; and researchers in primary care, health services, library science, informatics and computer science answering critical questions necessary to translate research into practice at the point of care.
At the present time the primary focus of the network is developing valuable benefits for family medicine departments, family practice residency programs and medical librarians/health sciences libraries. In the future, we hope to create benefits tailored to the needs of primary care practice based research networks.
The FPIN community is sustained through the voluntary contributions of members, through grants and contracts and through membership fees.
FPIN membership is open to all academically oriented organizations with interest in being active participants in pursuing the mission of the community. FPIN is currently composed of Founding Members, Organizational Members and some individual members. All members benefit from access to information sources, the opportunity for scholarly publication and research. Founding Members provide leadership in the community and each holds a voting position on the FPIN Board of Directors.
Who Were the Initial Founding Member Departments of FPIN?
- University of Chicago
- University of Colorado
- Michigan State University
- University of Missouri - Columbia
- University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
- SUNY - Upstate Medical University
- University of Washington
- University of Wisconsin