Press Releases
New Medical School to Start in 2013
To meet Singapore’s growing healthcare needs, a new medical school will be established at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), in partnership with Imperial College London. The new medical school will admit its first intake of 50 students in Academic Year 2013. This was revealed today by Dr Ng Eng Hen, Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defence, as he elaborated on the important role that the School would play in Singapore’s medical education landscape.
Healthcare demands in Singapore are expected to increase with a growing and ageing population. The new medical school will augment healthcare manpower needs by producing top-quality doctors and medical leaders who are attuned to the needs of patients and Singapore. It will also introduce innovations to medical education in Singapore and provide more opportunities for Singaporeans to pursue a high-quality medical degree.
The new medical school, an autonomous school of NTU which will be jointly managed by NTU and Imperial College London, will see Imperial developing and delivering a course overseas for the first time. On the partnership, the Rector of Imperial College London, Sir Keith O’Nions, said, “We are extremely proud to be working with Singapore, a country we have long admired for its support and application of world class science, engineering and medicine. Our newest partnership with NTU is extremely exciting and we are delighted to be joining forces with an institution that embodies many of our own aspirations, to develop a new generation of Singaporean doctors.
“The partnership gives us the chance to work with Singapore’s talented students and also provides a rare opportunity to pioneer a new medical curriculum. Singapore’s healthcare system will face a range of challenges in the future and we aim to equip our students with the skills they will need to tackle them. I hope that this agreement will open the door to a range of collaborations across our disciplines.”
President of NTU, Dr Su Guaning, said, “Partnering Imperial College London, one of the top five universities in the world, our medical school offers a new curriculum that features the strength of Imperial College’s world-leading medical expertise with NTU’s core strengths in engineering and business. It will also offer young students the opportunity to get a joint Imperial-NTU medical degree here in Singapore. This new medical school, which will have the National Healthcare Group as its main clinical partner, will start out not just training the best clinicians but also make a deep impact on the innovation of medical devices and the healthcare system as a whole.”
Key Features of the New Medical School
The new medical school will be positioned to meet the healthcare demands and needs of the future. Building on NTU’s and Imperial’s strengths in Science and Technology (S&T), it will tap on the increasing interface between medicine and S&T to advance healthcare delivery and practice, and further transform the way medicine is taught in Singapore.
The new medical school will offer a five-year undergraduate medical degree jointly awarded by NTU and Imperial. At steady state, the School is envisaged to admit 150 students per year.
The founding Dean of the new medical school will be Professor Stephen Smith FMedSci, Principal of Imperial’s Faculty of Medicine and Chief Executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Professor Martyn Partridge, who holds Imperial’s Chair in Respiratory Medicine, will be Senior Vice Dean and will work full-time on the project in both London and Singapore. (Please refer to the Annex (272kb .pdf) for their biodata.) An experienced team of Imperial professors will lead the curriculum development at the new medical school, together with NTU faculty. The curriculum will infuse the key elements of Imperial’s educational model and adapt these for the local healthcare context. Imperial will also be actively involved in the establishment and running of the School. Imperial senior faculty will form part of the core faculty of the new medical school, and students in the School will benefit from being taught by and interacting with top Imperial faculty.
As clinical training is an important component of a medical curriculum, the new medical school will work with healthcare institutions across Singapore’s healthcare system to provide students with a strong foundation in clinical training across multiple healthcare settings. The new medical school’s primary clinical training partner will be the National Healthcare Group (NHG). The NHG is a leader in public healthcare in Singapore, recognised at home and abroad for the quality of its medical expertise and facilities. With its integrated network of primary healthcare polyclinics, acute care hospitals, and national specialty centres, the NHG will provide good clinical training support to the new medical school. It will offer students access to a wide range of services and patients, as well as opportunities to accumulate experience in treating a variety of diseases during their training.
The new medical school will have its own governing board with representatives from Imperial College, NTU and other stakeholders such as the MOE, Ministry of Health and NHG. The partnership agreement between Imperial and NTU covers an initial term of 18 years.
Imperial College London as Partner
Imperial College London was ranked fifth in the 2009 Times Higher Education (THES) overall rankings and is renowned internationally for its excellent teaching and research quality in S&T. Established in 1997, Imperial’s Faculty of Medicine is one of the largest medical schools in the UK and Europe. It is known for its rigorous and innovative medical programme, as well as its ability to reap synergies between medicine and S&T, resulting in innovations and inventions in bio-medical engineering, bio-surgery and technology.
Both Imperial and NTU share a similar heritage, as well as a common vision for medical education. Imperial’s Faculty of Medicine built on Imperial’s long-standing strong reputation and foundation in S&T disciplines. These attributes make them a good partner for NTU, which has traditional strengths in S&T.