What experts say Hong Kong’s new medical school must do to succeed

The new medical school set to be run by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) should ride on the institution’s unique technological strengths and catch up on clinical research to become a leading institution, experts and lawmakers have said.\nTheir comments followed the government’s announcement on Tuesday that HKUST had emerged as the top choice to operate the city’s third medical school, taking its place alongside the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the University of Hong Kong (HKU).\nAfter eight months of decision-making, the final call was said to be the result of a consensus reached by a government task force consisting of top experts and co-chaired by the city’s health and education ministers.\nProfessor Nivritti Gajanan Patil, one of the task force’s 19 members and vice-dean of the Macau University of Science and Technology’s faculty of medicine, told the Post that the vetting process itself had been a challenging task.\n“It’s probably 1,000 pages I have read. So it’s like reading a huge surgical book,” he said, with his estimate including the times that he had to read through the same papers multiple times.\nPatil recalled how task force members had read a large volume of documents prepared by the three institutions, in addition to meeting each of the applicant universities twice and assessing each of the 10 parameters one by one.\nBesides HKUST, Baptist University (HKBU) and Polytechnic University (PolyU) also applied to operate the city’s third medical school.\n“It was a truly difficult decision. If there were proposals for three medical schools, each one would have got [selected] based on their own strengths and merits,” he said.\n“They did a good job,” he said. “But it is sad that to select only one, and that was by consensus, it wasn’t any open voting.”\n\nExplaining the group’s decision on Tuesday, Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau said that HKUST enjoyed an edge thanks to its clear strategic positioning, integration of medicine with research and development, global vision and relatively strong financial strength.\nTask force member Professor Joseph Sung Jao-yiu, who is also a former president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told the Post that HKUST should leverage its strengths in artificial intelligence and adopt an innovative mindset when designing its curriculum.\n“For example, when we studied medicine in the past, we needed to memorise everything. But now they should learn about how AI and big data can help us unveil what was unseen,” said Sung, now a senior vice-president of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the dean of its medical school.\n“How do future doctors collaborate with AI to treat patients? What are the technology’s pros and cons? And what are the ethical considerations for using AI? The school should prepare future doctors for all these.”\nLawmaker Rebecca Chan Hoi-yan, who is running in the Legislative Council election, said HKUST’s medical school could strike a different path from its counterparts at HKU and CUHK, which enjoyed a reputation for surgical operations and minimally invasive procedures.\n“We are talking a lot about scientific research and development … Training in our medical schools should be diversified,” she said.\n“The third medical school may focus on nurturing medical research and technology development talent.”\nTony Mok Shu-kam, a professor in clinical oncology at CUHK and honorary secretary of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, said it would be crucial for the university, known for its basic research, to also ramp up its work in clinical research.\n“Many major journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet, are related to clinical research,” he said. “If a medical school fails to publish articles in those top journals, it will be hard for that institution to be top ranked.”\n“The status of a medical school is closely related to its ability in clinical research.”\nMok said that it would be important for the school to have its own hospital base to conduct clinical research, and before it is ready, the institution could consider collaborating with two suitable medical faculties.\n\nA source said Tseung Kwan O Hospital and the coming New Acute Hospital in Kai Tak would be the major teaching facilities for the new school before the teaching hospital in Ngau Tam Mei in the Northern Metropolis was ready.\nSung said that while HKBU had an edge on Chinese-Western medicine collaboration and PolyU possessed a strong foothold in healthcare-related subjects such as physiotherapy, HKUST had strong research capabilities, high international rankings and a good track record.\n“We are convinced that HKUST can shoulder the responsibility of operating the third medical school, training more doctors and medical research talents to make Hong Kong a leading place in medical development,” he said.\nMedical sector lawmaker David Lam Tzit-yuen, who is seeking another term in the Legco election, said it was essential for the university to recruit international professors and staff to establish an inclusive and open culture at the new medical school.\nHe added that the city was set to have more medical students in the future, and it could consider recruiting more non-locals to help turn Hong Kong into an international medical education hub.\nIn a statement, CUHK said it and HKUST could complement each other and promote the development of medical education and research.\nHKU medical dean Professor Lau Chak-sing said he looked forward to his university’s future cooperation with HKUST and CUHK in contributing to local and national healthcare services as well as technology and innovation development.\nClick here for the full list of Legco election candidates.\n