The College of Biomedicine and the Boundary of CityU Having No Medical School for Humans (Newly Established 2025)

This article belongs to Module 11 "Medicine / Hospital" (Part II) of the City University of Hong Kong Unofficial History Archive. CityU does not have a medical school for humans — its institutional structure on the "human health" side is the College of Biomedicine, newly established in January 2025 — a research-oriented school of life and health sciences that does not train clinical doctors (no MBBS/MBChB). This article maps out the college's structure, departments, programmes, and research directions, and clarifies the boundary that CityU "has no medical school for humans and no Chinese medicine degree." For CityU's veterinary medicine structure (Hong Kong's only veterinary school), see veterinary-college.md; for the "One Health" policy centre that extends from CityU's public health outreach, see the companion piece biomedical-and-health-sciences-2.md.

Data current as of June 2026; facts with years/figures are cited on the spot. Discrepancies between Chinese and English names for the college are noted in situ.

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# 1. Overview

The College of Biomedicine is part of CityU's recent "academic restructuring" — following the establishment of the College of Computing in September 2024, CityU consolidated and upgraded biomedical-related strengths scattered across existing faculties into a standalone college in January 2025, aligning with Hong Kong's policy direction of becoming an "international hub for medical and healthcare innovation."

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# 2. Establishment: The "Upgrade" of January 2025

# 2.1 Officially Operational on New Year's Day

According to a CityU press release (2025-01-02)^※, the College of Biomedicine officially began operations on 1 January 2025, starting with three departments: the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Department of Neuroscience. The college aims to "address pressing challenges in life and health sciences through interdisciplinary collaboration" and will "conduct cutting-edge research in life sciences and health technologies."

Hong Kong Chinese-language media reported this concurrently. According to Wen Wei Po (2025-01-02)^※, the college's Chinese name was given as "生物醫學學院", English name College of Biomedicine, and it "officially began operations yesterday," aiming to "leverage CityU's research strengths in biosciences, bioscience engineering, neuroscience, and digital medicine, addressing life and health science challenges through groundbreaking interdisciplinary research."

# 2.2 Policy Background: Aligning with Hong Kong's Healthcare Innovation Hub

According to the CityU press release, the college's establishment aligns with Hong Kong's initiative to become an "international hub for medical and healthcare innovation," with one goal being to attract international pharmaceutical and medical device companies to conduct R&D and clinical trials in Hong Kong. In other words, the College of Biomedicine's strategic positioning leans towards "research + industry translation," rather than "clinical training of doctors."

# 2.3 Inaugural Dean

According to CityU and multiple press reports, the inaugural Dean of the College of Biomedicine is a distinguished visiting professor from the college's Department of Biomedical Engineering, taking up the role in March 2025; their research focuses on viral membrane proteins. In keeping with this archive's convention, incumbent college leadership is referred to primarily by title, with named biographical entries reserved for Module 06 "Personalities."

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# 3. The Three-Department Structure and Research Directions

The College of Biomedicine comprises three departments, each with its own focus.

# 3.1 Department of Biomedical Sciences

The Department of Biomedical Sciences did not emerge in 2025 — according to the department's overview^※, it was established as early as January 2014 to develop strategic growth areas in life sciences. Its positioning is "to become a leading centre for biomedical education and frontier research," with research emphasis on cancer, neuroscience, and regenerative medicine; laboratory facilities include electrophysiology and in vivo imaging, among others.

Undergraduate and postgraduate programmes include the BSc Biological Sciences, BSc Biomedical Sciences, MSc Health Sciences and Management, and MPhil/PhD research degrees. The BSc Biomedical Sciences offers streams in clinical chemistry, haematology, microbiology, and pathology, and includes arrangements for clinical or industry placements — this is the stream within CityU's "health-related" undergraduate provision closest to "clinical laboratory science / medical laboratory science."

# 3.2 Department of Biomedical Engineering

The Department of Biomedical Engineering focuses on engineering-oriented directions such as medical devices, biomaterials, medical imaging, wearable and diagnostic technologies, representing the intersection of CityU's traditional engineering strengths with health technology. The college offers the BEng in Biomedical Engineering (BEngBME) at undergraduate level. CityU has a strong showing in sustainability and biomedical engineering research (see Module 04 "Research" for details).

# 3.3 Department of Neuroscience

The Department of Neuroscience is the most distinctly "newly established" among the College of Biomedicine's three departments, reflecting the college's designation of neuroscience as one of its four research pillars (biomedical sciences / biomedical engineering / neuroscience / digital medicine). Neuroscience research spans molecular, cellular, systems, and behavioural levels, complementing the electrophysiology/in vivo imaging facilities of the Department of Biomedical Sciences.

Taken together, the three departments give the College of Biomedicine a chain covering "molecule—cell—device—neural—digital", from basic to translational, from biology to engineering; its output is papers, patents, technology, and talent, not clinical consultations.

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# 4. Undergraduate Programmes: Bio³ and Health-Related Degrees

According to the College of Biomedicine website^※, the college's undergraduate programmes include:

• Integrative Bioscience & Bioengineering Programme (Bio³) — the college's flagship, interdisciplinary programme;
• BSc Biomedical Sciences (BScBMS);
• BSc Biological Sciences (BScBISI);
• BEng Biomedical Engineering (BEngBME).

The website also mentions the college's research in cutting-edge areas such as Genome Editing / CRISPR gene editing technology. These programmes and research directions together form the undergraduate foundation of CityU's "health-related" education — but note: they train biomedical scientists and engineers, not practising doctors.

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# 5. CityU Has No Medical School for Humans: Clarifying the Boundary

In the "Medicine/Hospital" module of most comprehensive universities, this slot is filled with "Medical School Structure × Teaching Hospital × Clinical Department Strengths × Chinese Medicine"; but City University of Hong Kong does not have a medical school for humans.

# 5.1 The One-Sentence Conclusion

CityU has no faculty of human medicine: no Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS/MBChB) programme training Western-medicine doctors, no self-operated public or private teaching hospital for humans, and no Chinese medicine degree programme. This is a fundamental distinction from the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, which is in the process of establishing a medical school).

The academic structure CityU officially publicises comprises "11 Colleges and Schools^※" (Business, Engineering, Humanities and Social Sciences, Science, Computing, etc.), among which two are related to "human/animal health": the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences (JCC) and the College of Biomedicine (newly established January 2025). That official page does not list any "Faculty of Medicine" or "Medical School (human medicine)."

# 5.2 Where Hong Kong's Medical Schools for Humans Are — Not at CityU

Institutions in Hong Kong that can award degrees in medicine and surgery and train registered medical practitioners have long numbered only two, recently increasing to a third in the planning stages — and none of them is CityU:

Therefore, any reference to "CityU Medical School," "CityU MBBS," or "CityU-affiliated teaching hospital for humans" is a misattribution. CityU's position on the healthcare map is not in the "human medicine" column, but in the "veterinary medicine" and "biomedical research" columns.

# 5.3 Chinese Medicine Also "Not Applicable to This University"

The institutions in Hong Kong offering Chinese medicine degree programmes are Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and The University of Hong Kong (HKU)^※ — three in total. Upon checking, CityU does not offer degree programmes such as Bachelor of Chinese Medicine or Master of Chinese Medicine, nor does it have a School of Chinese Medicine or Chinese Medicine Hospital structure.

The distinction needed here is between "degree" and "research": CityU has no Chinese medicine degree, but at the science/biomedical level, it does have research activities related to Chinese materia medica and botanical drugs (e.g., relevant laboratories on campus). This archive marks the "Chinese Medicine Degree" column as "Not Applicable to This University"; any related research content (if it exists) falls under this article and Module 04 "Research," and will not be presented under a "School of Chinese Medicine" heading within this module.

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# 6. The Boundary with "Medical School for Humans": CityU's Health Focus is "Research-Oriented"

Bringing the facts of this article together clarifies CityU's actual position on the "health/medical" map:

1. No clinical medical education: CityU does not run MBBS/MBChB programmes, has no affiliated teaching hospital for humans, and does not train registered doctors.
2. Has research-oriented biomedicine: CityU houses its health technology research — cancer, neuroscience, regenerative medicine, biomedical engineering, digital medicine, gene editing, etc. — in the College of Biomedicine established in 2025, with a positioning leaning towards "research + industry translation."
3. Has Hong Kong's only clinical veterinary system: In the sense of "clinical training + teaching hospital," the structure at CityU that truly constitutes a "medical school + hospital" is its veterinary school (JCC + animal medical centre + diagnostic laboratories). See veterinary-college.md, veterinary-college-2.md, veterinary-college-3.md.

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