Abstract
Academic medicine may have been in crisis but it is now starting to flourish again. In the words of Eric Thomas: "Clinical academia has a rosy future if you really celebrate and respect it as an activity, if you ensure a supply of graduates committed to research, if you get the relationship right with the key partners, if you get the best facilities for prosecuting research". It looks as though many of these 'ifs' will now be fulfilled within the reforming agenda of MMC.