The Contest for the Third Medical School (2024–2025)

Three universities, a ten-criteria scorecard, a newly coined "AI+ Academy," and a contest that dragged on for over a year — in the end, Hong Kong did not get a four-way split, but a single winner: HKUST. PolyU's bid came with a blueprint for Ngau Tam Mei, more than 90 laboratories, and over 1,300 health-related academic and research staff — yet it could never shake off one structural weakness: no teaching hospital. This article recounts the full course of the contest.

This article belongs to Module 11 "Medicine/Hospitals" of the PolyU WILD (PolyU Wild History) archive, part of the reference section (00–12). It is a factual account, carrying no credibility rating.

This is a matter of public record: the government invited proposals, three universities competed, and the government announced the outcome — the entire process was covered by official announcements and multiple media reports. This article provides a neutral account based on official announcements and press coverage, setting out the different positions plainly side by side — it takes no side, makes no predictions, and draws no conclusions. That PolyU was not selected is a published fact that this article records as such, but it makes no value judgment of any kind on "institutional politics / victory or defeat / superiority or inferiority".

Every claim involving a year, a figure, or a quotation is cited inline at the point where it appears; a ## Sources section appears at the end. In-depth profiles of PolyU's four key health disciplines — medical laboratory science, biomedical engineering, optometry, and nursing — appear in the companion documents third-medical-school-bid-2.md, third-medical-school-bid-3.md, and third-medical-school-bid-4.md.

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# 1. The story in one sentence

In 2024 the Hong Kong government set in motion the establishment of a third medical school; a government press release^※ shows that Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) each submitted a proposal before the 17 March 2025 deadline; according to a government press release (2025-11-18)^※, the Executive Council gave its approval in principle on 18 November 2025 for HKUST to establish the new medical school — PolyU was not selected.

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# 2. Why a third medical school at all

Until now Hong Kong has had only two medical schools (at the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong). Establishing a third is part of the government's healthcare manpower and medical-education policy. According to a government press release (2025-11-18)^※ and a UGC press release (2025-11-18)^※, the new medical school is positioned to help Hong Kong develop into an "international hub for medical training, research and innovation." It is planned to open in the 2028/29 academic year, admit an initial cohort of 50 students, and run a four-year graduate-entry medical programme.

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# 3. Official process timeline (per government announcements)

The timeline below follows government press releases exclusively, with each entry sourced:

According to the press release of 2025-03-17^※, the Task Group adopted a set of 10 main criteria for the overall assessment, including "innovative strategic positioning," "curriculum structure and assessment methods," "financial sustainability," and others (the announcement cites only some of the criteria by way of example; it does not list all 10).

Note: CityU did not submit a proposal. City University of Hong Kong was at one point widely expected to be one of the contenders, but according to the government press releases cited above, only HKBU, PolyU and HKUST actually submitted proposals. This site follows the official announcements and does not repeat the unsubstantiated "four-way contest" account (this is a correction we have adopted after active verification).

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# 4. The three bids, characterised (attributed to the government announcement)

Key discipline: the summaries of the three bids below are attributed to the objective descriptions in the government announcement as their grammatical subject. We add no evaluation of our own and draw no comparisons. According to the government press release (2025-11-18)^※:

• HKUST (selected): the government announcement states that the HKUST proposal focuses on training "physician-scientists" who combine clinical competence with research expertise.
• PolyU: the government announcement states that the PolyU proposal focuses on inter-professional training and the application of artificial intelligence.
• HKBU: the government announcement states that the HKBU proposal advocates an integrated Chinese-Western medicine curriculum.

On financial commitment, according to the same press release^※, the government notes that HKUST has committed its own resources (including donations and funds) to partly finance the new medical school, including over HK$2 billion to build a new complex at its Clear Water Bay campus (to serve as interim premises). Several media outlets further reported that the government regarded the HKUST bid as a better fit with its "matching grant" policy, and mentioned a permanent campus at Ngau Tam Mei (@[as relayed by China Daily Hong Kong Edition, HKFP and others, see Sources; Caixin Global (2025-11-19)^※).

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# 5. What PolyU's bid contained (per PolyU's own media releases)

PolyU has publicly explained its proposal, and this section follows PolyU's official press releases, with the facts attributed to PolyU itself:

According to a PolyU media release (2025-03-19)^※, PolyU announced its intention to establish Hong Kong's third medical school, with core features including:

• a planned four-year bachelor's degree programme for applicants who already hold a first degree, admitting an initial cohort of 50 local and non-local students, with gradual expansion thereafter;
• an "AI+ Academy" focused on AI-assisted diagnosis and treatment, leveraging the University's strengths in medicine–engineering integration;
• the University's claim of support from over 1,300 health-related academic and research staff and more than 90 specialised laboratories and research facilities;
• a planned base at the "UniTown" development in Ngau Tam Mei in the Northern Metropolis, with PolyU stating it is willing to bear the related financial costs before moving in (same release^※).

Separately, according to the South China Morning Post (2024-03-01)^※, as early as 2024 PolyU had publicly signalled plans for a medical school, a hospital and a hotel in the Northern Metropolis; the report quotes PolyU as saying it has "natural advantages" in programmes such as nursing, physiotherapy, optometry and medical laboratory science (this is second-hand news reporting; attribution of quotations rests with the original article).

A reminder: PolyU currently has no medical school and no teaching hospital; everything above is at the level of proposal/vision, not an established institution. PolyU's existing health disciplines and clinics are covered in health-disciplines-and-clinics.md.

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# 6. The outcome and PolyU's response

According to the government press release (2025-11-18)^※ and government news site (2025-11-18)^※, the Executive Council approved in principle that HKUST would host Hong Kong's third medical school. Multiple media outlets (e.g. Caixin Global^※) reported that the unsuccessful bidders were HKBU and PolyU.

PolyU responded publicly at once. According to a PolyU media release (2025-11-18)^※, PolyU said it "fully respects the Government's decision" and congratulated HKUST; the release states that PolyU had submitted "a comprehensive proposal built on decades of medical and health education experience," and expresses the hope that it will serve as a reference for healthcare development in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. PolyU also said it would continue to leverage its strengths in medicine–engineering integration, deepen clinical collaboration with hospitals, accelerate translation of medical research, actively nurture healthcare talent, and "review and draw lessons from this experience… to prepare for future challenges" (quotation per the official release, attributed to PolyU's current leadership by title).

Under §02 of the site regulations, the 00–12 reference section may name individuals; however, since this article touches on the role of the current university leadership, we have chosen a uniformly conservative approach for consistency: individuals are referred to only by titles such as "PolyU's current President" and "Chairman of the PolyU Council," never by name (official statements by government officials, by contrast, are attributed by office exactly as in the announcements).

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# 7. Current status

As of this article's data cut-off (June 2026), HKUST hosting Hong Kong's third medical school is a published, settled outcome. According to the government news site (2025-11-18)^※, HKUST's new programme is expected to admit its first cohort in the 2028/29 academic year (50 students, possibly expanding gradually to 100–200 per year), with the first cohort beginning internships around 2032. The permanent campus is to be built at Ngau Tam Mei, expected to be completed in 2034–2035; in the interim, HKUST will construct temporary facilities on its existing Clear Water Bay campus. On funding, the government will provide matching grants to the new medical school, and HKUST has additionally committed more than HK$2 billion of its own for infrastructure.

PolyU was not selected. PolyU has publicly said it respects the decision and will draw lessons from the experience. Judging from the public statements of PolyU's current leadership, the University will continue to deepen its health-sciences research around "medicine–engineering integration" and "AI in medicine," but no further bid for the third medical school is in play. Whether PolyU will propose new medical-education initiatives in future, and how its Northern Metropolis health-related plans proceed, are matters for the future; this site makes no predictions and will wait for official announcements to verify and update.

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# 8. Policy background: why Hong Kong needs a third medical school

Hong Kong's healthcare manpower shortage is a long-standing issue, and the government's proposal to establish a third medical school sits within a distinct public-policy context:

• Doctor supply: according to the Department of Health's "number of doctors per 10,000 population" statistics^※, Hong Kong had 21.5 doctors per 10,000 population at end-2023 (roughly 2.1 per 1,000), rising to 22.0 at end-2024; in reviewing the Medical Registration Ordinance, the Health Bureau also noted that this ratio was "far lower than Singapore (2.5), Japan (2.5), the US (2.6), the UK (3.0) and Australia (3.8)"^※; both the Hospital Authority and the private sector have long faced doctor shortages;
• The capacity limits of two medical schools: the HKU medical school (Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine) and the CUHK medical school (CU Medicine) together train about 550 medical students a year (roughly 250 at HKU and 300 at CUHK); according to government documents, the new medical school is expected to add 100–200 more doctors per year at maturity;
• Greater Bay Area medical collaboration: government documents also position the third medical school as a platform for training medical talent for the Greater Bay Area, consistent with the "Hong Kong–Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park in the Lok Ma Chau Loop" and the wider GBA strategy;
• The graduate-entry model: the government has chosen a four-year graduate-entry programme, aligned with similar models in the UK and Australia, and distinct from the current six-year undergraduate programmes at HKU and CUHK (per government press release (2025-11-18)^※).

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# 9. PolyU's health-discipline foundations and the bid

PolyU's decision to compete rested on a genuine disciplinary base: nursing (established for many years, offering programmes from bachelor's to doctoral level), physiotherapy (one of the oldest in Hong Kong, ranked among the world's best internationally), optometry (the only school of optometry in Hong Kong), medical laboratory science, radiotherapy, occupational therapy, and biomedical engineering, strengthened in recent years through collaboration with the Faculty of Engineering.

The network of clinical partner hospitals accumulated by these disciplines (mainly public-hospital collaborative arrangements involving Tseung Kwan O Hospital, geriatric hospitals, and others) and its teaching staff were what PolyU regarded as the foundation of its bid. Yet PolyU has no medical school and no teaching hospital — an obvious gap relative to HKU and CUHK, and one of the core problems its proposal had to solve (per South China Morning Post (2024-03-01)^※). In a sense, PolyU came to the table holding a strong hand of "allied health" cards, trying to win a game that required the trump card of a "teaching hospital."

In-depth profiles of PolyU's four key health disciplines (rankings, history, exclusive positions) appear in the companion documents third-medical-school-bid-2.md (medical laboratory science / biomedical engineering), third-medical-school-bid-3.md (School of Optometry), and third-medical-school-bid-4.md (School of Nursing).

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# 10. The HKBU and HKUST bids (official overview)

According to the government press release (2025-11-18)^※, the three competing institutions each had a distinct positioning:

• HKBU proposal (unsuccessful): focused on integrated Chinese-Western medicine, consistent with HKBU's long tradition in Chinese medicine (HKBU has a School of Chinese Medicine with deep strengths in herbal medicine, acupuncture and related fields); HKBU's clinical collaboration arrangements are likewise built around its Chinese-medicine service network.
• PolyU proposal (unsuccessful): focused on inter-professional training and AI applications, drawing on PolyU's cross-disciplinary strengths in engineering, AI and data science; PolyU proposed the "AI+ Academy" and "medicine–engineering integration" as its differentiating position.
• HKUST proposal (selected): focused on training physician-scientists, emphasising clinical competence and research expertise in equal measure; HKUST draws on its strong research base (with strong performance in the science fields of the QS subject rankings) and over a decade of investment in biomedical research.

The government has not published a criterion-by-criterion scoring of each institution, so this site offers no comment on the relative merits of the proposals, deferring to the official announcement. Taken together, the three bids presented three distinct "differentiation plays" — integrated Chinese-Western medicine, AI plus inter-professional training, and physician-scientists — and the government ultimately chose the one tied most tightly to "research excellence."

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# 11. Main themes in media and public discussion (attributed)

This section assembles the main positions aired in public discussion of the third medical school, strictly attributed to media reports and not representing this site's own views. Arguments supporting PolyU's bid (per the South China Morning Post and other outlets^※): PolyU's "AI + medicine" positioning aligns with the government's policy objective of building Hong Kong into a smart healthcare city; PolyU's inter-professional teams built up in nursing, optometry, physiotherapy and elsewhere provide a foundation for curriculum innovation; and the strategic "UniTown" deployment at Ngau Tam Mei in the Northern Metropolis, if realised, could offer long-term planning space for a medical school. Arguments questioning PolyU's bid (per multiple media analyses): analysts said PolyU's lack of a medical-education tradition and the absence of a teaching hospital were the most fundamental weaknesses of its proposal; some suggested the "AI + medicine" positioning was novel but had no mature precedent; and some held that PolyU would have to close an "accreditation gap" with HKU and CUHK.

This site cannot verify whether the above analyses are objective; it records only that these arguments appeared in the media, with attribution, and neither endorses nor scores them.

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# 12. The field compared with other Hong Kong universities

Beyond HKU (Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine) and CUHK (CU Medicine), which already have medical schools, the actual contestants this time were PolyU (foundations in nursing/optometry/physiotherapy/medical laboratory science; unsuccessful), HKBU (School of Chinese Medicine, integrated Chinese-Western medicine base; unsuccessful) and HKUST (life science/biomedical research base; successful). CityU, though once widely speculated to be in the running, did not submit a proposal. The outcome carries far-reaching consequences: HKUST, alongside its established engineering-and-science image, has formally entered medical education, creating a "three-way balance" with HKU and CUHK; PolyU and HKBU, meanwhile, must continue developing their health disciplines without establishing a medical school.

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# 13. PolyU's "AI in medicine" prospects beyond the bid

Although it was not selected to host the third medical school, PolyU retains several official public positions in the "AI + medicine" direction: PolyU PolyMed (InnoHK research centre) — the PolyMed research centre led by PolyU at the Hong Kong Science Park, focused on medical technology translation (see health-disciplines-and-clinics.md); optometry — PolyU's School of Optometry holds international standing in myopia-control research (details in third-medical-school-bid-3.md); rehabilitation robotics and medical devices — PolyU's engineering and design faculties continue to produce award-winning medical device innovations (such as an ankle-foot rehabilitation robot that won a CES 2025 Innovation Award; per EurekAlert!^※); PolyU's Northern Metropolis planning — if the Ngau Tam Mei UniTown materialises, PolyU could develop integrated medical, educational and research facilities in the area, but this is future planning and this site makes no predictions.

Seen differently, "not getting a medical school licence" and "abandoning the healthcare domain" are two different things — the cards PolyU holds in nursing, optometry, rehabilitation and AI may not assemble into a medical school, but they are more than enough to sustain an entire "medicine–engineering integration" industrial chain.

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# 14. Not applicable / not found

• Correction to the "four-way contest" account: the institutions that actually submitted proposals were HKBU, PolyU and HKUST; CityU did not submit one (press release 2025-03-17^※).
• No speculation on "inside stories" behind the outcome: the government announcement attributes the decision to an "overall assessment" against the "10 criteria," with financial sustainability among the publicly stated reasons; this site does not relay any "inside reasons" not confirmed by official or credible press reports.

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# 15. Policy landscape, terminology, and PolyU's next steps

For decades Hong Kong had only two medical schools — the HKU Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine and the CUHK Faculty of Medicine — and graduates of both must obtain practising qualifications from the Medical Council of Hong Kong. In many East Asian higher-education systems, establishing a medical school is regarded as a core marker of a "comprehensive research university." The government has used a "matching grant" model to encourage universities to raise their own funds, and the four-year graduate-entry curriculum is the first of its kind in Hong Kong. Since the outcome, PolyU has publicly said it will "draw lessons from the experience." Possible paths include continuing to deepen "AI medicine + inter-professional health" (the most likely, and already stated officially), building collaborative ties with the new HKUST medical school, or applying again for medical-school status at a later date (this site makes no predictions).

Terminology: graduate-entry means a programme for which applicants must already hold a bachelor's degree; a physician-scientist is a doctor who possesses both clinical and research capabilities; the Task Group is the government's expert advisory body set up to evaluate the three proposals; Ngau Tam Mei is one of the selected sites for the Northern Metropolis "UniTown."

Data cut-off statement: the main data in this article run to June 2026. The progress of HKUST's medical school preparation, and whether PolyU announces new strategies, may change after that date; readers are advised to consult official announcements for verification and updates. This site does not predict any future developments.

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