China's first undergraduate intelligence-oriented medical program, initiated by Tianjin University (TJU), was approved by the Education Ministry on March 21, and will start recruiting students in the autumn semester.

The "Intelligent Medical Engineering" program is expected to recruit about 30 undergraduates in September and they will all be jointly trained by TJU and Tianjin Medical University, receiving duo graduation certificates - in medicine and engineering - upon graduation.

Outstanding students from the program may enter the undergraduate-master-doctor integration training system and obtain a medicine or engineering doctorate.

Professor Gu Xiaosong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, is in charge of the program. He believes that many modern clinical diagnoses and treatments require engineering techniques.

In China, as medical education and engineering education belong to different categories and are always on parallel tracks, it is difficult to develop true inter-disciplines, said Gu.

He pointed out that the research of emerging disciplines has always been weak in China's medical science and technology innovation chain.

The establishment of the program is a blueprint for the integration of medicine and engineering. It also lays out the future of innovation in the field of intelligent medicine, thus improving the future levels of health care, he added.

TJU President Zhong Denghua, who’s also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the new program is an exploration concerning new medical science and new engineering education reform.

Modern higher education aims to cultivate diversified and innovative talents and provide them with relevant support for the future, Zhong added.

With the joint establishment of the biomedical engineering program, TJU and Tianjin Medical University have seen closer ties in academic cooperation, said Ming Dong, director of the Medicine Construction Office and dean of the Institute of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine at TJU.

The new program is expected to further integrate and optimize existing resources of both universities and achieve a nonlinear incremental effect of “1+1>2”, he noted.

In the next step, the two sides will carry out all-round and multi-level cooperation in discipline construction, scientific research, talent training, and international exchange with a view to achieving a win-win result, Ming added.

Founded in 1895 as Peiyang University, the joint-program serves as a building block for the comprehensive development of TJU as a "world-class university with Chinese characteristics."