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Education in Hong Kong
Opinion
SCMP Editorial
SCMP Editorial

Editorial | Medical school’s biotech focus will boost Hong Kong’s innovation push

The new school’s emphasis on biotechnology and research will foster partnerships and collaboration with the rest of the Greater Bay Area

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The HKUST campus in Clearwater Bay on November 19, 2025. Photo: Nora Tam
SCMP Editorial
Hong Kong is well served by its two traditional medical schools. A third school taking shape at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology will add an innovative dimension to healthcare as well as a welcome boost to the supply of doctors. An emphasis on biotechnology and research, and the school’s ultimate location in the Northern Metropolis, near the Shenzhen tech hub, will foster partnerships and collaboration with the rest of the Greater Bay Area.
The first intake of 50 students at the new graduate medical school will be in 2028-29, but there is no time to lose in preparation and speeding up construction, as we are reminded in an update from HKUST chiefs. About 20 per cent of the 50 places in the HKUST medical school’s inaugural intake may be reserved for non-local students, expected to be mostly from the mainland.

The emphasis in student admission to the four-year course will be a background in biotechnology. HKUST president Nancy Ip Yuk-yu said, “This innovative medical school combines artificial intelligence, biotechnology and clinical medicine to cultivate a new generation of doctors who embrace technology.” The university will position the new medical school to complement the existing ones at the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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Professor Wong Yung-hou, dean of science at HKUST, said the non-local students were most likely to come from mainland China, adding, “I think they will stay in Hong Kong upon graduation.”

Ip said the first complex of the new medical school at the university’s Clear Water Bay campus would be completed in the second quarter of 2028. Construction of the future school in Ngau Tam Mei in the Northern Metropolis is expected to finish in 2033 or 2034.
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While hi-tech is globally competitive, biotechnology, life sciences and pharmaceutical development offer scope for Hong Kong, mainland China and the United States to cooperate on public health issues. US and other venture capital has recently taken a more aggressive approach to investing in Chinese start-ups, including in cancer and ageing research.

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