Harvard Medical School Announces Center for Education and Research in DubaiHarvard Medical School Harvard Medical School Dubai Center to be built in Dubai Healthcare City At a ceremony today, Dr. Robert K. Crone, dean for international programs at Harvard Medical School, and president and chief executive officer of Harvard Medical International (HMI), will join Saeed Al Montafiq, chief executive officer of Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC), and Dr. George Thibault of Harvard Medical School to break ground on the Harvard Medical School Dubai Center (HMSDC). Scheduled for completion in 2005, the Center will house the Institute for Postgraduate Education and Research. The Center will be managed by HMI, which has a strategic relationship with DHCC to develop the quality management infrastructure and education programs for the entire site.  Training and research programs at the HMSDC will be funded by the newly launched Harvard Medical School Foundation for Dubai. The Foundation will be administered through an endowment fund designed specifically to support the work of HMSDC as well as collaborative research programs in the region and around the world. This fund will be managed by the Harvard Management Company. Harvard Medical International and Dubai Healthcare City have already established an HMI-DHCC postgraduate training program to foster the development of a cadre of physician-specialists who will contribute to the advancement of medicine and health in Dubai, the UAE, and the broader Gulf Region. The first clinical fellowships will begin in Boston in July, 2004. The initial phase of this effort focuses on training specialists through clinical and research fellowships and short-term observerships at the Harvard teaching hospitals in the Boston area. Ultimately the program will be based in Dubai Healthcare City at the Harvard Medical School Dubai Center. Dr. Crone explained that educational innovations will be built into the HMSDC programs. "An interesting element of this endeavor is the participation of leading educators from Europe, Asia, and the U.S., who are excited about the opportunity to use their experiences to help create, from the ground up, a wholly new infrastructure that benefits from the lessons of past initiatives and reform efforts. This leadership group makes up the Education Committee and is working to shape the programs so that they accommodate current trends in medicine while also meeting the highest international standards of education excellence." Al Montafiq believes that the HMSDC is a key element of DHCC's efforts to make Dubai a regional leader in medical education. "The physicians and researchers who train in this program will form the core faculty who will lead health care and research initiatives in the Gulf Region," he said. "The main focus of DHCC's support is to provide leadership that will complement and strengthen clinical services at DHCC and, ultimately, benefit patients." The HMSDC will collaborate with leading academic institutions to provide educational support functions to DHCC and the region. Dr. Joseph B. Martin, dean of Harvard Medical School, said, "Dubai Healthcare City has generated interest among health care professionals both within and outside of the Gulf Region, simply by building their mission around the real needs of the people in the region." In addition to building an infrastructure to support lifelong learning, and instilling the practices that foster high-quality patient care, the leadership of DHCC see the HMSDC as a vessel through which the Middle East can begin to reclaim its status as a center of scientific discovery. "The leadership at DHCC recognize that creating a robust research environment will be critical to attracting the best minds in the region to Dubai, and thereby continually enriching the services offered at DHCC for the well-being of families," said Martin. It is hoped that research funded through the HMSDC will help to drive a resurgence in scientific and medical excellence in the Arab world-a centuries old tradition that has faded in recent years. In addition to funding research and education, the endowment created through the Harvard Medical School Foundation for Dubai will seek to make the health care services offered at DHCC available to as broad a population as possible.
For more information, or to contact Harvard Medical School, see their website at: www.hms.harvard.edu |
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