Teaching in physiology and physiopathology requires transferring insights and concepts in integrated systems. This will form the necessary platform for a similar approach to the patient and his state of health or disease. It will itself depend on a bird's eye view on cellular and molecular biologic processes and their sound understanding. Medical education benefits from a global approach of normal and abnormal processes at the cellular, organ and body level.

In the medical curriculum at the Brussels Free University-VUB, the courses of physiology and physiopathology are conceived as individual entities that are not subdivided in independent organ-based modules. Cutting physiology into separate courses on the different organs rapidly leads to a "reductionism" view of physiology, and subsequently of medicine.

Lectures in an auditorium are considered as a crucial instrument in this form of teaching as long as it stimulates interactions with the students. It is therefore important to limit the number of students per lecture session. It is the task, and challenge, of the lecturer to clarify and illustrate the basic mechanisms and insights with relevant examples from the life and medical sciences. This will not only force the teacher to seek the most attractive and convincing tools and illustrations but will also stimulate students into further reading and thinking. Professionalism of the teachers will be the key in this mode of education.

In order to involve learners in their own learning needs, the development of a portfolio may promote intrinsic motivation to deepen the knowledge and to stimulate appropriate scientific "curiosity".

The teacher can propose the framework of a topic, followed by the context application to stimulate clinical understanding. Also, case studies can be used to gain understanding of the physiopathological processes involved.

The portfolio is a tool to actively involve students and learners, with regular reciprocal evaluations.

Finally, the learner should be able to explore experiential phenomena in their "real "life settings: theory building of concepts in physiology does not reduce the wide range of interindividual variability. On the contrary it allows articulating these concepts with the influence of a wide range of internal and external factors influencing health and disease.

In order to achieve these goals, schools of medicine will have to ensure the scientific and medical significance of their biomedical departments.