Budget 2025: Third medical school to be decided soon

The government will decide this year which university will run the new medical school, Paul Chan Mo-po, Financial Secretary, said in his budget address today.

The new third medical school was announced in October last year and local universities were invited to submit proposals. 

The Task Group listed out ten key parameters for the third new medical school on Nov. 28, 2024, including innovative strategic positioning from other two local universities; collaboration with healthcare institutions in the Greater Bay Area, student admission programme to both local and non-local students etc.

Three universities have said they will submit proposals, including Hong Kong Baptist University which runs the city’s only school of Chinese Medicine.

Dr. Manson Fok, the co-chairman of the HKBU Preparatory Committee for the new hospital, said in a public meeting on Feb 24 that the vision for the new medical school is to foster integration and cooperation of both Eastern and Western medical practices through innovative education and transdisciplinary research.

Fengmei Lin, 21, a Chinese medicine student at HKBU, said, "If the new medical school can be successfully established, it will be able to achieve a deep integration of Chinese and Western medicine, and further improve the construction of Chinese medicine clinics."

"We urgently need to build a new medical school and increase the number of admissions,” said Nickie Chen, an assistant teacher of Chinese medicine at HKBU. “At present, we already have a Chinese medicine hospital, and HKBU’s lack of a Western medicine hospital restricts the development of students.” 

Lin Chenxi, a year 4 Chinese medicine student, said, “Once the new medical school is established, we will have a stable internship place and more employment opportunities after graduation. This is effective in solving the shortage of medical personnel, which is of great significance to the sustainable development of the entire medical industry," Lin said.

“Even students majoring in Chinese medicine must learn basic courses in Western medicine. However, we lacked a professional student training base. The existing internship base is in Guangzhou. Although more than a dozen local clinics are cooperating with us and inviting our students to intern, we hope to have our internship base locally," Chen said.

“Other schools may focus more on theoretical knowledge in medical education, while we have accumulated a wealth of clinical experience in traditional Chinese medicine and herbal medicine,” said Jiabo Li, the candidate chairman of the School of Chinese Medicine.