The University Council has approved the establishment of a new faculty within the University: the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.
“This is an exciting time to be a part of Macquarie University” said Vice-Chancellor Professor S Bruce Dowton, “and I look forward to our continued journey in the pursuit of ever-increasing excellence in academic medicine and health care.”
The new Faculty builds on our aspiration to have the nation’s first fully integrated Academic Health Sciences Centre under a university’s leadership. It will bring together the excellent work of medical and allied health researchers across the University and around the country, with unparalleled access to the world-leading clinical resources and research facilities found only on our campus.
The Faculty is a significant step in the establishment of Australia’s only Academic Health Sciences Centre, accelerating our quest for distinction at the intersection between medical research, healthcare and higher education.
Recruitment for an Executive Dean will begin immediately.
Find out more about the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.
The Academic Health Sciences Centre
The Academic Health Sciences Centre is a partnership between the university and healthcare providers, with an integrated approach to research, clinical services, education and training. This research and healthcare model is used by many of the world’s leading academic institutions and hospitals, including Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, UCLA, Mayo Clinic and many others in the United States. It ensures that medical research breakthroughs lead to direct clinical benefits for patients.
There are similar models in operation in Canada, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, but a university-led and located Centre has not been established in Australia to date.
Our campus already boasts Australia’s only high-technology private hospital owned and operated by a University and a postgraduate medical research and teaching school, and the plan for an Academic Health Sciences Centre were outlined Our University: A Framing of Futures last year.
“Over recent years, Macquarie has made major investments in targeted areas that have strong external relationships, e.g. medicine, healthcare and hearing. We need to consolidate and expand these investments,” wrote Professor Dowton. “Therefore, we will extend our engagements locally and beyond by delivering Australia’s first university-led academic health campus to bring education, bio-medical and translational research together with state-of-the-art clinical care.”
Professor Dowton is an expert in innovative healthcare systems, having previously served as Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer of Harvard Medical International. In launching the new Faculty and Academic Health Sciences Centre, he outlined the next steps in this development, including a focus on greater NHMRC funding and the establishment of a novel pre‐registration medical teaching program.
“Macquarie University is unique among Australian universities, with maturity and achievement in our University Hospital and the Australian School of Advanced Medicine. Evidence from the US confirms that bringing these enterprises into full convergence improves healthcare and patient outcomes, and accelerates the conversion of laboratory‐based discovery into clinical practice, enabling us to deliver a level of healthcare unprecedented in this country that will benefit all of our society.”