Tsinghua University School of Medicine ushered in the first affiliated tertiary hospital

The following article is from the medical profession and the author serves doctors to improve medical care

After more than 20 years of medical education, Tsinghua University finally has its first affiliated tertiary hospital.

According to the official website of Tsinghua University on May 11, Yuquan Hospital of Tsinghua University was recently confirmed as a tertiary hospital. The hospital was formerly Beijing Yuquan Hospital (402 Hospital of the Ministry of Electronics Industry), and was transferred to Tsinghua University in April 2003.

At present, the hospital is the clinical teaching hospital of Tsinghua University and the teaching hospital of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, with 500 beds.

Source: The official website of Yuquan Hospital of Tsinghua University

Compared with other well-known medical schools in Beijing, Tsinghua University School of Medicine has only 4 affiliated hospitals, limited by the small number of affiliated hospitals and the long-term absence of tertiary affiliated hospitals, Tsinghua University's presence in the medical field has not been strong, and the ranking of medical schools is even inferior to that of Xinjiang Medical University.

According to the official website of Tsinghua University, the university has four affiliated hospitals: the First Affiliated Hospital of Tsinghua University (Beijing Huaxin Hospital), Tsinghua University Yuquan Hospital (Tsinghua University Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine), Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, and Tsinghua University Chuiyangliu Hospital.

Among them, Beijing Huaxin Hospital, Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital and Chuiyangliu Hospital are all tertiary general hospitals. Yuquan Hospital once took the initiative to apply for conversion from a "general hospital" to a "hospital of integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine" because the number of beds could not meet the requirements of a tertiary hospital, and this time it was recognized as a third-class hospital by the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Although Yuquan Hospital was the first to be promoted to the top three, its comprehensive strength is not the strongest among the hospitals affiliated to Tsinghua University. Since its opening on November 28, 2014, Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital has carried out more than 100 leading medical technologies at home and abroad, set a number of world records, and has continuously won A+ in the performance evaluation of tertiary public hospitals in China.

The small number of directly affiliated hospitals and the insufficient strength of affiliated hospitals are the two major shortcomings that restrict the medical development of Tsinghua University.

01. Tsinghua's "Medical Anxiety"

Tsinghua University has long been aware of this, so as early as 2019, there was news of "Tsinghua University's first tertiary hospital". In October of that year, the Qingdao Municipal Government and Tsinghua University signed a framework agreement on the cooperation of medical institutions in the West Coast New Area of Qingdao to jointly build the Qingdao Hospital affiliated to Tsinghua University in the West Coast New Area.

The project, which started in September 2020, is the first affiliated hospital of Tsinghua University outside Beijing and is expected to become the first tertiary hospital of Tsinghua University. However, due to funding and other problems, the project was stalled for 3 years, and it was not until October 19, 2023 that construction officially resumed.

In the newly announced planning plan, Tsinghua Qingdao Hospital has a total construction area of 388,000 square meters and a total investment of 4.76 billion yuan, planning to build "one area (national regional medical center), one base (Tsinghua University Clinical Medical School teaching base), and two centers (Tsinghua University Precision Medicine Research Center and Smart Medical Research Center)".

Zhao Yingmin, deputy head of Qingdao's West Coast New Area, publicly responded last year that Tsinghua Qingdao Hospital is expected to be completed in 2025.

As the top 985 university in the mainland, Tsinghua University's comprehensive strength is undoubted, but in the field of clinical medicine, especially compared with Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Zhejiang University, Fudan University and other universities, Tsinghua University is "a big cut".

In the 2023 China Medical School Comprehensive Strength Ranking launched by the "Medical Community", Tsinghua University School of Medicine ranked 45th in the country, far behind Peking Union Medical College (1st in the country), Peking University Health Science Center (4th in the country), Capital Medical University (5th in the country) and Chinese People's Liberation Army Medical College (14th in the country).

Around 2000, the world-class universities and medical colleges ushered in a wave of mergers, and 9 of the 11 medical colleges directly under the former Ministry of Health were merged into 985 universities, such as Beijing Medical University merged into Peking University. There are also many medical colleges and universities that choose to merge with stronger comprehensive universities, such as Zhejiang Medical University merged into Zhejiang University, and Shanghai Second Medical University merged with Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

At this time, Tsinghua University also began to focus on promoting the construction of medical disciplines, and officially established the School of Medicine in 2001. In the following years, the former hospital directly under the Ministry of Information Industry (Huaxin Hospital) and the former 402 Hospital of the Ministry of Electronics Industry (Yuquan Hospital) were successively assigned to Tsinghua University and became its affiliated hospitals, and the construction of Chang Gung Hospital was started in 2004.

At the same time as establishing its own medical school, Tsinghua University has also been actively striving to merge with Peking Union Medical College in order to seek a strong alliance. According to a 2002 report in the Beijing Evening News, Peking Union Medical College will be renamed "Tsinghua University Peking Union Medical College", and Tsinghua University will no longer run a separate medical school.

It was not until 2006 that the two sides formally signed the "Implementation Opinions of Tsinghua University and Peking Union Medical College on the Implementation of the Two Agreements". A year later, Peking Union Medical College officially changed its name to Peking Union Medical College.

According to the name change announcement issued by the Ministry of Education, it is agreed to use the name of "Peking Union Medical College (Tsinghua University Health Science Center)" at the same time. After the name change, the original affiliation, staffing, asset relationship and fund management system of the school remain unchanged.

Many people see this name change as a formal "marriage" between Union Medical College and Tsinghua University, but more than ten years later, Union Medical College still maintains an independent state.

02. Self-built medical school

The merger of Tsinghua University, which was blocked, turned to continue to build its own medical school. Since 2009, Tsinghua University has established the "Life Science and Medical Pharmacy Experimental Class", which is an 8-year enrollment program, including medicine and pharmacy. In 2012, the Department of Pharmacy of Tsinghua University School of Medicine was established.

So far, Tsinghua University School of Medicine has the Department of Basic Medicine, the Department of Pharmacy, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the Public Health Research Center. However, in the following years, the Department of Pharmacy and the Department of Public Health were established independently from Tsinghua Medical College.

In February 2021, Academician Ba Denian published a signed article in China Science News, saying that if Tsinghua University School of Medicine is placed among Chinese medical schools, its medical discipline evaluation can only be ranked in Class B.

This assessment exacerbated Tsinghua's "medical anxiety". The following year, Tsinghua University put forward its vision for the medical discipline at a teacher-student communication meeting - "the top 10 in the country within 10 years and the top 10 in the world within 30 years".

The turning point came in June 2022. At that time, Tsinghua University announced in a high-profile manner that it planned to establish a medical department (headquarters). However, in the following days, the preparatory ceremony was not held as scheduled, and the reason is still unknown.

At present, the official website of Tsinghua University describes the School of Medicine as "committed to cultivating medical scientists, senior clinicians, medical educators and technological innovation talents in the big health industry who have both clinical skills and scientific research capabilities, and can engage in research, medical services, teaching management, and technological innovation in the medical field".

Tsinghua University School of Medicine currently has the Department of Basic Medicine, the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the School of Clinical Medicine, covering three first-level disciplines: basic medicine (including immunology, tumor biology, microbiology and infectious diseases, neuroscience, molecular and biology), biomedical engineering (including medical imaging, neural engineering, micro-nano and tissue engineering) and clinical medicine.

Among them, ESI ranks among the top 1% in the world in the four research directions of immunology, microbiology and infectious diseases, neuroscience, and molecular and biology in basic medical disciplines. "[The School of Medicine] has gradually moved away from the scientific model of following and has established an international presence that leads new directions," the website reads.

03. More clinical layout

In general, the interdisciplinary integration and the combination of medicine and engineering are the distinctive characteristics of the construction of Tsinghua University School of Medicine, which benefits from the close cooperation between the disciplines of life sciences, bioengineering and the School of Medicine in the early days, so the development focus of the School of Medicine of Tsinghua University is also on the interdisciplinary fields of life sciences and basic medicine.

But that's not enough, and in the surrounding areas of Beijing, Tsinghua is constantly planning more clinical layouts.

In March 2023, a group of 13 people, including Wang Jun, Secretary of the Party Committee of Shanxi Medical University, and Xie Jun, President of Shanxi Medical University, visited the School of Medicine of Tsinghua University, and the two sides signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement on issues such as discipline construction, talent training, faculty, and teaching practice bases.

Shanxi Medical University has 20 affiliated hospitals and a large number of non-directly affiliated hospitals, sitting on a huge amount of medical resources. For Shanxi Medical University, being big but not strong is the key factor restricting its development into a world-class medical university. The two sides hit it off, and two months later, a high-profile signing ceremony was held.

At the meeting, the "Shanxi Medical University-Tsinghua University School of Medicine Collaborative Innovation Center for Frontier Medicine" was officially launched, which will give full play to the leading role of Tsinghua University School of Medicine in scientific research, and rely on the advantages of Shanxi Medical University to jointly carry out the training of new medical professionals. The "Implementation Rules of the Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement between Tsinghua University School of Medicine and Shanxi Medical University" was signed on the same day.

Before the signing and launching ceremony, Tsinghua University School of Medicine and Shanxi Medical University also planted a "friendship tree", perhaps, in the near future, the comprehensive strength of Tsinghua Medical School will gradually grow with the growth of the sapling.