PolyU Health Disciplines: Overview of the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences

Module: 01 Academics · Sub-file: Flagship Disciplines In-Depth Profile — Faculty of Health and Social Sciences (FHSS) Last updated: 2 July 2026 This profile focuses on PolyU's Faculty of Health and Social Sciences (FHSS). PolyU has no medical school, and its health disciplines do not train doctors (MBChB). Instead, they train the nurses, optometrists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, prosthetists-orthotists, radiographers, and medical laboratory scientists the Hong Kong health system cannot function without, alongside applied social sciences (social work, etc.). Several of these programmes are Hong Kong's first or only training base of their kind. For the full history, curriculum and research of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences and the Department of Applied Social Sciences, see the companion article health-sciences-rehab-and-social.md. Sources are primarily official PolyU FHSS and departmental pages, Wikipedia, and industry media. All official data are dated and attributed.

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# 1. Why "No Medical School" Is Stressed

Hong Kong has long had only two medical schools (at HKU and CUHK). PolyU has never had a medical school, does not award the MBChB, and does not train clinicians. But this does not mean PolyU is weak in health — quite the opposite. PolyU concentrates its resources on allied health and nursing, forming a complementary rather than competitive relationship with the two medical schools: the medical schools produce doctors; PolyU produces nurses, therapists, optometrists, laboratory/radiography technologists, and prosthetists-orthotists.

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# 2. Units Under the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences (FHSS)

According to PolyU's website, FHSS comprises five teaching units (two Schools + three Departments^※):

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# 3. School of Nursing

• History: According to the University, the School of Nursing grew out of the former Department of Nursing and Health Sciences, established in 1977 — the first tertiary institution in Hong Kong to offer a degree programme in nursing^※.
• Significance: Before nursing degrees existed, Hong Kong nurses were trained chiefly through hospital apprenticeships; PolyU was the first to bring nursing education to the degree level, with far-reaching effects on the professionalisation of nursing in Hong Kong.
• Programmes: Offers the Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Nursing, mental health nursing, and master's and doctoral programmes (see departmental pages for the full programme list).

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# 4. School of Optometry

• History: According to public sources, optometry education was established at PolyU in 1978^※.
• "Only in Hong Kong": PolyU's School of Optometry is the only institution in Hong Kong offering optometry undergraduate and postgraduate education — practically all of Hong Kong's registered optometrists are trained here.
• Programmes: Offers the Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Optometry, as well as the Doctor of Optometry and other advanced professional pathways.

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# 5. Department of Rehabilitation Sciences and the Other Departments at a Glance

• Department of Rehabilitation Sciences: According to the University, it has trained Hong Kong's occupational therapists and physiotherapists since 1978^※, covering Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy and Prosthetics and Orthotics — the Department hosts Hong Kong's only internationally accredited prosthetics and orthotics education and training pathway^※. For the Department's full history, teaching clinics and research, see the companion article health-sciences-rehab-and-social.md.
• Department of Health Technology and Informatics: Per the FHSS website, covers Medical Laboratory Science, radiography/medical imaging, and health informatics^※, training the technical professionals who staff hospital laboratories, imaging/radiography departments, and health-information roles.
• Department of Applied Social Sciences: Covers Social Work, social policy and social entrepreneurship, reflecting PolyU's view of social care and health care as a continuum. For the Department's full history, programmes and rankings, see the companion article health-sciences-rehab-and-social.md.

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# 6. At a Glance: PolyU Health Disciplines' "Hong Kong Firsts"

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# 7. Academic Performance and International Rankings

FHSS's constituent disciplines perform well in international assessments.

Nursing's QS ranking has been stable over the years: 22nd globally in 2022, 20th in 2023, 19th in 2024, 18th in 2025 — a steady upward trajectory.

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# 8. Clinical Training: No Teaching Hospital + Extensive External Partnerships

PolyU has no teaching hospital of its own, but this does not mean clinical training is lacking — on the contrary, FHSS maintains a comprehensive clinical-education partnership network spanning Hong Kong's public and private health systems.

According to the School of Nursing "Clinical Education" page^※, nursing clinical placements are provided by the Hospital Authority (covering its hospital clusters), the Department of Health (primary and community care), Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital (private-sector placements), plus extended training sites such as nursing homes for the elderly and community health centres. For optometry clinical training, the on-campus Optometry Clinic (Room A034) runs alongside community eye centres, including the "Sik Sik Yuen — PolyU Optometry Centre" serving low-income residents and the elderly in Wong Tai Sin since 2009, and the Lai King Comprehensive Community Health Centre established in 2004. Rehabilitation clinical training draws on the Rehabilitation Clinic, operating since 1993, which offers physiotherapy, occupational therapy and Traditional Chinese Medicine acupuncture and tuina, and places students in Hospital Authority hospitals as well as community sites such as elderly care centres and schools. For medical laboratory science and radiography, MLS students complete clinical rotations across public and private medical laboratories in Hong Kong, while radiography students complete placements in the radiology and radiotherapy departments of Hospital Authority cluster hospitals.

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# 9. Research Highlights

FHSS research pursues two tracks in parallel: "bedside" clinical orientation and "laboratory" basic/translational science.

Nursing research: The School of Nursing runs the Youth Quitline, whose multi-year data underpins smoking-cessation policy research; the Squina International Centre for Infection Control addresses hospital-acquired infections and infectious-disease prevention; and a WHO Collaborating Centre for Community Health Services focuses on primary health care in the community.

Optometry research — the DIMS "defocus" lens: Myopia control is the School of Optometry's flagship research area. The PolyU team's "Defocus Incorporated Multiple Segments" (DIMS) lens technology has been published in Ophthalmology (a top journal in the field) and brought to market as the commercial lens "MiyoSmart®", developed jointly with HOYA of Japan (School of Optometry website^※) — a signature example of knowledge transfer in PolyU's health research.

Rehabilitation science — robot-assisted rehabilitation: Rehabilitation robotics is a major direction for the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, pursued jointly with PolyU's Faculty of Engineering, targeting clinical areas such as stroke rehabilitation, functional restoration after amputation, and neurodevelopmental disorders in children.

Health data science (HTI): The Department of Health Technology and Informatics pursues research under a "4M" framework spanning AI medical imaging and health big data, with an MRI laboratory and radiotherapy planning and treatment-simulation laboratories as research infrastructure; outcomes feed into clinical-pathway optimisation at Hospital Authority hospitals.

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# 10. Professional Accreditation and Licensing

FHSS disciplines each map to a Hong Kong professional registration body; graduates must pass the relevant registration examination to practise:

Every allied health profession in Hong Kong has its own statutory registration mechanism, and one must pass the registration examination to practise lawfully. According to the School of Nursing's own statements, its graduates' licensing-examination pass rates are among the highest in the profession (exact annual figures per the official website); the physiotherapy and occupational therapy programmes hold international recognition from World Physiotherapy and the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) respectively; for other disciplines, specific pass-rate figures await verification from primary official sources, and this article makes no unsubstantiated claims.

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# 11. Graduate Destinations and the Employment Landscape

FHSS graduate employment rates are consistently high. The main destinations: Nursing — Hong Kong public hospitals (the Hospital Authority is the dominant employer), private hospitals, and community care organisations; Optometry — optometry centres, optical chains, private practices, and community eye-care services; Physiotherapy/occupational therapy — Hospital Authority rehabilitation units, private clinics, school-based early-intervention programmes, and elderly care services; Prosthetics and orthotics — the Hospital Authority, private P&O centres, and international humanitarian organisations (with the internationally recognised certificate); Medical laboratory science/radiography — Hospital Authority laboratories/radiology departments, private healthcare providers, and food/environmental testing; Social work — welfare organisations, hospital social work (medical social services), and the government's Social Welfare Department.

The "price tag" of this employment band is documented in public figures. According to the UGC's statistics on average annual salaries of full-time employed graduates^※, among bachelor's graduates of the eight UGC-funded universities in the 2023/24 academic year, the "medicine, dentistry and health sciences" category had an average annual salary of HK$540,000, the highest of the seven broad discipline groups, well above the next-highest, education (HK$362,000), and social sciences (HK$300,000). Note that the UGC publishes only by broad discipline group; there are no official per-discipline figures for nursing, optometry, or physiotherapy as individual programmes, so actual starting salaries for FHSS graduates depend on the specific profession and employer.

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# 12. AI-Assisted Healthcare and Health Informatics Research

As AI penetrates healthcare, FHSS departments are actively moving into AI health-application research. AI medical imaging: the Department of Health Technology and Informatics (HTI) uses deep learning to analyse CT, MRI and ultrasound images to assist early tumour screening; AI-assisted automated analysis of OCT images for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and glaucoma is pursued jointly with the School of Optometry (per the HTI research page^※); in radiotherapy planning, AI is used for automated segmentation of tumour targets and organs at risk. Nursing informatics: the School of Nursing is exploring wearable devices and mobile applications for home monitoring of patients with chronic conditions, and mining electronic health records to build a "smart nursing" framework for identifying high-risk patients. Rehabilitation robotics: the AI-assisted gait-analysis system developed with the Faculty of Engineering uses computer vision to assess patients' gait in real time; the application of natural-language processing to aphasia rehabilitation assessment is also at an exploratory stage.

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# 13. Frequently Asked Questions (Q&A)

Q1: PolyU has no medical school — are its health-science programmes worth less than those at HKU or CUHK?

According to QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026^※ and ShanghaiRanking (ARWU) 2025^※ data, PolyU's nursing discipline ranks 18th globally, ahead of the nursing programmes of most universities that do have a medical school. "Having a medical school" and "having strong nursing/allied health programmes" are two different dimensions — PolyU has built an independent, highly ranked disciplinary ecosystem in allied health.

Q2: Does PolyU have its own teaching hospital?

No. PolyU has no teaching hospital of its own, but students gain broad clinical placement opportunities through clinical-training cooperation agreements with public hospitals under the Hospital Authority and private hospitals such as Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital. This "partner hospital" model is standard international practice among allied-health institutions (per the School of Nursing clinical education page^※).

Q3: Why is PolyU optometry "the only one in Hong Kong"?

According to the optometry programme page^※, PolyU has offered an optometry degree since 1978, and remains the first and only institution in Hong Kong offering optometry at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Hong Kong's optometry regulatory ordinance requires a licence obtained through training on a degree programme at a licensed university, which institutionally makes PolyU the sole training channel for the profession.

Q4: Is the DIMS myopia-control lens technology PolyU's own invention? Has it been commercialised?

Yes. The DIMS (Defocus Incorporated Multiple Segments) technology was developed by the PolyU School of Optometry research team^※; clinical studies show it slows the progression of myopia in children by about 52%, and the findings were published in Ophthalmology, a leading journal in the field. PolyU partnered with HOYA of Japan to launch the commercial product "MiyoSmart®", which has received market approvals in multiple countries and regions.

Q5: PolyU's prosthetics and orthotics programme is "the only one in Hong Kong" — where does its international recognition come from?

According to The O&P EDGE, an industry publication^※, PolyU hosts Hong Kong's only prosthetics and orthotics education and training pathway accredited by the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO). ISPO accreditation is an important quality-assurance mechanism for international P&O education; graduates holding a certificate from an ISPO-accredited pathway find their qualifications recognised by international humanitarian organisations such as the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross).

Q6: For someone hoping to work in AI healthcare research, what advantages does studying in FHSS offer?

PolyU FHSS is one of the few institutions in Hong Kong to closely integrate hands-on health professional training with interdisciplinary AI/data-science collaboration. Per PolyU's HTI research page^※, the Faculty has access to extensive real-world clinical data (via Hospital Authority partnerships) and draws on the AI/machine-learning capabilities of the Faculty of Engineering and the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics. In addition, research clusters such as AIR@InnoHK under PolyU's InnoHK platform provide funding and infrastructure support for interdisciplinary medical-AI research.

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# 14. How This Profile Relates to the Rest of This Site

• The Faculty's place in the University's overall structure → faculties-and-schools.md
• Complete list of departments → academic-departments.md
• Full in-depth profile of Rehabilitation Sciences and Applied Social Sciences → health-sciences-rehab-and-social.md
• Health-related research (e.g. rehabilitation robotics, medical imaging) → ../04-research/
• Detailed descriptions of teaching clinics → ../11-medical-hospital/health-disciplines-and-clinics.md
• The bid for the third medical school (in which PolyU was unsuccessful) → ../11-medical-hospital/third-medical-school-bid.md
• This site has no standalone medicine module (PolyU has no medical school); see ../11-medical-hospital/ for related explanation.

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