From the Liveblog of
Sunday, June 2, 2024
Cornerstone laid for new University of Haifa Medical School
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
An official ceremony is held to lay the cornerstone for the Herta and Paul Amir School of Medicine at the University of Haifa, a new facility scheduled to open at the end of 2025.
The new school is to work in conjunction with the Carmel Medical Center and will have a six-year program to train new doctors, with a special emphasis on incorporating new technologies into the field such as AI, virtual reality simulations, remote medicine and advanced diagnostic tools.
Another feature of the program is to be community, therapeutic and social aspects of the medical field, a track planned together with the Welfare and Health Sciences faculty at the University of Haifa.
“The establishment of the school comes against a background of a severe shortage of doctors in Israel, and as compared to the center of the country, the shortage of doctors in the north is much greater… One of the main goals of the University of Haifa School of Medicine is to strengthen medicine in the north, not only through studies and clinical training of students at Carmel Hospital, but also through scholarships and other activities that will keep graduates as doctors, in the north,” the university says in a statement.
The establishment of the school has been funded by a NIS 200 million ($54 million) donation from the Amir family, along with an additional NIS 50 million ($13.5 million) raised by the university. The proposed curriculum still needs final approval by the Council of Higher Education, the statement notes.
