International Panel Convened to Review Medical Education - Ministry of Education press release (6 Feb 2001)

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1. The Ministry of Education has commissioned an international panel to review the system of medical education in Singapore. The review is timely so as to ensure that our medical education system is up-to-date and capable of meeting the needs of medical care, clinical research and the life sciences industry.

2. The international panel is chaired by Lord Ronald Oxburgh, Honorary Professor at the University of Cambridge, UK. He will lead a team comprising foreign experts with good overviews of the global directions and trends in university education and experience in managing institutions that have medical facilities. The members are:

3. Advances in the life sciences have had a great impact on university education. The National University of Singapore has increased its efforts to foster a conducive environment for the development of talents for the life sciences industry by restructuring its undergraduate programmes and launching bioengineering, biocomputing and bioinformatics initiatives. Similarly, Nanyang Technological University has plans to tap into the fast growing life sciences industry. It launched a new Master of Science programme in biomedical engineering in 2000 and has plans to start a biological sciences programme this year. A College of Life Sciences comprising a School of Biological Sciences and a Biosciences Research Centre will be set up by July 2002.

4. Advances in the life sciences also necessitate a comprehensive review of the system of medical education in Singapore to ensure that our medical education system is capable of meeting the needs of this new industry. In particular, the training of medical doctors will need to take into account the impact that genomics will have on medical care and the possibility of some medically-trained personnel taking up careers in the broader life sciences cluster beyond patient care and clinical research.

5. Lord Oxburgh, Chairman of the review panel, elaborates: "I am sure that the time is right to review the role of medical education in Singapore. The traditional boundaries of medicine are disappearing as science becomes sufficiently sophisticated to contribute to the understanding of the astonishing complexity of the human body. The breath-taking advances of molecular biology and information technology mean that tomorrow's doctors will need to understand the new weapons at their disposal in their fight against disease. These advances will also bring new business opportunities that can build on Singapore's strengths in research and on its exceptionally well-trained work force. It will be a privilege to work with the outstanding international team that the Singapore Government has assembled to advise on these matters."

6. The panel will review the system of medical education in Singapore, taking into account Singapore's intent to build up its life sciences capability, the needs of the health care sector, and the interfaces with the education system at the pre-University levels.

7. Specifically, the panel will look into the curriculum and pedagogy of our medical education system as well as the appropriate structure for delivery of medical education. In addition, the panel will examine the interfaces and linkages between medical education and research; and the facilities and infrastructure needed to support medical education in the new millennium.

9. The international panel will visit Singapore in April 2001. During the visit, panel members will visit the medical and science faculties at NUS, facilities relating to life sciences initiatives at NTU as well as hospitals, research institutes and organisations in the life sciences industry. It will also meet with relevant policy formulators and key stakeholders from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Economic Development Board of Singapore, the National Science and Technology Board and the medical profession.

10. The panel is expected to complete its review in the third quarter of 2001 and will submit its recommendations to the Ministry of Education for consideration.

Lord Oxburgh is a graduate of the Universities of Oxford and Princeton, and subsequently taught geology and geophysics at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In Cambridge he was Head of the Department of Earth Sciences from 1980-1988 and President of Queens' College from 1984-1989. He has spent various periods as Visiting Professor at Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology and Cornell University. Between 1988 and 1993 Lord Oxburgh was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence, and from 1993 to January 2001 he was Rector of Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.

Lord Oxburgh has been a member of the Science and Engineering Research Council, the Natural Environment Research Council, and the Advisory Council for Science and Technology. Between 1994 and 1997 he chaired the UK Inter-Agency Committee on the Environment and Global Change, and in 1995/6 served as a member of the National Academies Policy Advisory Group working party on the future of the national research base. In 1995/6 he served as President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He was recently a member of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (the Dearing Committee), and of the North Committee into the future structure of Oxford University. From 1994 to 1997 he was a member of the Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust Board.

Lord Oxburgh is a member of the Hong Kong University Grants Committee and the International Academic Advisory Panel of Singapore. He is currently a non-executive director of Shell Transport & Trading Company PLC and Chairman of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum.

He was elected to the Royal Society in 1978 and was awarded a life peerage in the Queen's Birthday Honours in June 1999.

Prof Per Belfrage is a graduate of the Faculty of Medicine at Lund University, and the NIH, Bethesda, U.S.A. He has served as assistant professor, associate professor and in 1988, was appointed Professor of Medical and Physiological Chemistry at Lund University. His research areas include Molecular Signalling, especially Mechanisms of Insulin Action/Experimental Diabetes Research. He has published extensively in international peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Prof Belfrage held the position of non-executive Director of the Lund University Board and Swedish Medical Research Council Board from 1987-1993. He was Vice Dean of Research between 1987-1993 and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Lund University from 1993-2000. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the Biomedical Center, Lund University as well as Chairman of the Board of Medicon Valley Academy, Copenhagen/Lund. Other positions held have included Chairman of the Board of SWEGENE, the Postgenomic Research and Technology Programme in South Western Sweden, a consortium formed between Lund University, Göteborg University and Chalmers Technical University, and Non-executive Director of Lund University Board 2001-2003.

PROFESSOR JOHN BELL
NUFFIELD PROFESSOR OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, UK

Professor Bell has been Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, since 1992. He is a Fellow of Magdalen College and is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford from 1975 to 1978 and did his postgraduate work in Oxford and London. He was Clinical Fellow in Immunology at Stanford University from 1982 to 1987. In 1987 he returned to Oxford on a Wellcome Senior Clinical Fellowship in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine.

Professor Bell has directed research programmes in Immunology and Genetics that have identified genes involved in Diabetes and Rheumatoid Arthritis. He was a co-founder of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford. His administrative responsibilities include the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, the largest biomedical research department in the UK. This Department has major research interests in genetics, immunology, structural biology and clinical medicine. Its clinical programme encompasses a Tropical Medicine Programme with several Units in the developing world and a major vaccine development programme. Professor Bell is a Member of Council for the Medical Research Council.

Prof Richard Larkins is a medical graduate of the University of Melbourne. After undertaking clinical training in internal medicine and endocrinology at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, he completed a Ph.D. at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, University of London in 1974. On his return to Australia, he combined clinical medicine, teaching and research in the Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (1974-1977) and the Repatriation General Hospital (1978-1983).

Prof Larkins occupied the James Stewart Chair of Medicine at the University of Melbourne (Royal Melbourne Hospital) from 1984 to 1997 and has held the positions of Director, Department of Diabetes and Endocrinology and Chairman, Division of Medicine at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He took up the position of Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne in January 1998.

In 1997, Prof Larkins was appointed Chairman of the National Health and Medical Research Council (March 1997 to February 2000), the principal funding agency for health and medical research in Australia, which also develops advice on all aspects of health care and produces ethical guidelines and advice in relation to both health research and health care. He is a member of the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council. In addition, he is the President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

His major research interest is in diabetes, and has ranged from molecular biology and cell biology through physiological and clinical research. He was awarded the RACP's Eric Susman Prize for medical research in 1982.

Other positions held by Professor Larkins have included Chairman of the Board of Censors of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Chairman of the Accreditation Committee of the Australian Medical Council and President of the Endocrine Society of Australia.

DR EDWARD MILLER
CEO OF JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICINE &
DEAN OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Dr Edward Miller was named Chief Executive Officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine, the 13th Dean of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Vice President for Medicine of The Johns Hopkins University in January 1997. His appointment followed a year-long national search for the first-ever CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, a new organisation which formally integrates operations and planning of the School of Medicine with The Johns Hopkins Health System and Hospital to ensure their continued pre-eminence in education, discovery and patient care. As CEO, he is responsible for both the School and the Health System and reports directly to the University President.

Under his aegis, both The Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine continue to be ranked among the very best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, and the School continues to rank at the top in NIH research funding. Johns Hopkins Medicine's recent expansion ranges from the acquisition of Howard County General Hospital, strategically located between Baltimore and Washington, to the establishment of Johns Hopkins Singapore. As part of a master plan for the Hopkins Medical Campus, two major new buildings for cancer treatment and cancer research opened in 2000, and ground was broken for a research building to house a new Institute of Genetic Medicine.

Dr. Miller, an anaesthesiologist who has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific papers, abstracts and book chapters, joined Hopkins in 1994 as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anaesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, a post he held until May 1999. He was named Interim Dean of the School of Medicine in 1996. He came to Hopkins after eight years at Columbia University in New York, where he served as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anaesthesiology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Prior to that, he spent 11 years at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he rose from Assistant Professor to Professor of anaesthesiology and surgery and Medical Director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Dr. Miller's research has focused on the cardiovascular effects of anaesthetic drugs and vascular smooth muscle relaxation. He has served as President of the Association of University Anaesthesiologists and editor of Anaesthesia and Analgesia and of Critical Care Medicine. Elected to the Royal College of Anaesthetists in London in 1993, he has served on the board of the International Anaesthesia Research Society and from 1991 to 1994 was Chairman of the FDA's Advisory Committee on Anaesthesia and Life Support Drugs.

Born in February 1943 in Rochester, N.Y., Dr. Miller received his A.B. from Ohio Wesleyan University and his M.D. from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He was a surgical intern at University Hospital in Boston, chief resident in anaesthesiology at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, and a research fellow in physiology at the Harvard Medical School. In 1981-1982, he spent a sabbatical year as senior scientist at Hopital Necker in Paris. A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Miller is also a board member of United Way of Central Maryland and a member of the State of Maryland's Council on Cancer Control and Health Care Access and Cost Commission.

To undertake a comprehensive review of the system of medical education in Singapore, taking into account Singapore's intent to build up its life sciences capability, the needs of the health care sector and the interfaces with the education system at the pre-University levels. The specific areas of the review pertain to: