John Hopkins Medicine International and RCS Ireland help establish Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine

PUTRAJAYA: Johns Hopkins Medicine International and Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland will help provide courses at a RM2 billion medical university that will be built outside Kuala Lumpur, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said.

Perdana University will be built as a public-private partnership on a 130-acre site in Serdang, near Putrajaya, with two medical schools and a 600-bed teaching hospital, Muhyiddin said. There will also be research and a life science research center.

“The savings to the government alone is estimated to be millions of ringgit annually as medical students need no longer be sent overseas for their education,” he told reporters in Putrajaya today. “The university is also expecting a significant inflow of foreign students.”

Malaysia hopes the initiative can help reverse its brain drain by attracting physicians, specialists and researchers, including some of its own citizens currently working abroad. The government is establishing a “Talent Corporation” to help convince its 700,000 nationals living abroad to return home and contribute to the Southeast Asian country’s growth story.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today witnessed the signing of an agreement in Putrajaya with Johns Hopkins. Perdana will offer a four-year graduate program based on the U.S. medical university school’s curriculum, Muhyiddin said.

The second school will offer conventional five-year graduate program in collaboration with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, or RCSI, he said Perdana University will be funded by two Malaysian companies, Turiya Bhd. and Chase Perdana Sdn Bhd., according to today’s agreement.

Source: New Strait Times, Business Times Malaysia, John Hopkins Medicine News, BERNAMA

Tan Sri Datuk Dr. Mohan Swami of Chase Perdana and Edward D. Miller of Johns Hopkins shake hands while Tan Sri Dato' Haji Muhyiddin bin Mohd Yassin, deputy prime minister of Malaysia, and Hillary Clinton, U.S. secretary of state, look on.

The John Hopkins Medicine International will be assisting Malaysia in establishing the FIRST PRIVATE GRADUATE MEDICAL SCHOOL and FIRST PRIVATE TEACHING HOSPITAL. John Hopkins International has signed agreement with Academic Medical Centre and an associate company of Turiya to help Malaysia develop its first fully integrated private four-year graduate medical school and teaching hospital.

The school, to be called Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine, will open in fall 2011. “For more than a century, Johns Hopkins has been recognized as a national and global leader in patient care, research and education,” Miller said. “We are honored to have an opportunity to share our innovations and best practices with the people of Malaysia. We firmly believe that this project will help us to continue our historic and vital mission of helping to raise the standards of health care around the world.”

Under the agreement, Johns Hopkins will assist with the development of every major aspect of the new medical enterprise, including medical education programs, campus design and facilities planning, and clinical affairs. Johns Hopkins also will guide academic development in alignment with the breakthroughs of its new Genes to Society curriculum and will consult on other important components, including the teaching environment and infrastructure, pedagogy, administration and student affairs.

And, in a third major component of the agreement, Johns Hopkins will advise Malaysian colleagues on the development and integration of research programs across the entire medical enterprise.

Operationally, all education, patient care and research functions and programs will be managed in accordance with the Johns Hopkins Medicine organizational and operational model.
“It is a great privilege to be able to assist Malaysia with the establishment of its first private graduate medical school and teaching hospital,” Nichols said. “Not only will this collaboration have a transformational impact on the quality of medical education, research and health care delivery for Malaysia and the region, but it also will bring a wide range of benefits to the university, departments, faculty and staff here in Baltimore.”

Johns Hopkins will provide a leadership team for the new school that includes vice deans as well as a founding dean and CEO; advise and consult with its Malaysian partners on faculty and student recruitment; recruit and supply founding core faculty and staff, who will administer the Genes to Society curriculum and advance the new school’s research mission; provide training in the Genes to Society curriculum and educational program development for non–Johns Hopkins faculty; and advise and consult in campus design, research program development and hospital operations.

Johns Hopkins faculty will have opportunities to take temporary or potentially permanent assignments of six months to two years at Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine or Perdana University Hospital; participate as curriculum trainers for Malaysian and other international faculty, or in specific research collaborations, during their stays in Baltimore; or visit Kuala Lumpur as guest faculty for one to two weeks. JHM staff will also be eligible for some temporary or permanent positions.

“This is a remarkable opportunity to transform the medical educational system and introduce a new thematic medical paradigm to Southeast Asia,” said Wiener, who will take up residence in Malaysia in January. “The people there are enthusiastic about medical education reform and establishing an academic medical center with Hopkins values.

“I hope that the Johns Hopkins community will share this excitement and participate in the groundbreaking effort,” he said. “We are looking for teachers and role models who are looking to live in this exciting environment. Johns Hopkins is deeply invested in the success of this collaboration. I welcome people who want to be part of it.”

The curriculum, Wiener said, will be in English, and applicants will be required to complete the MCAT in English.

The school is projected to open with up to 100 “highly qualified” students, Wiener said. David Trabilsy, former director of admissions at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, will be interim director for medical student admissions. In preparation for the 2011–2012 academic year, faculty and staff from Johns Hopkins are expected to be in place in Malaysia in July.

Academic Medical Centre’s primary focus is to develop Perdana University, a public-private partnership. Chase Perdana holds an 80 percent equity interest in Academic Medical Centre, while Turiya Berhad owns the remaining 20 percent. A premier construction company in Malaysia and the Middle East, Chase Perdana was the main contractor to design and build the University Malaysia Sabah, one of the premier universities in Malaysia.

What is Gene to Society Curriculum?:

The curriculum development process addressed a variety of forces advocating for change in the way we prepare physicians in the 21st century, which makes it hard to give a simple answer to this question, but a good place to start is in the title, Genes to Society. The new curriculum begins with a grounding in what we’ve learned from the Human Genome Project about human variability, risk and the ability to modulate disease presentation and outcomes. We have also brought in a wealth of knowledge in the social and behavioral sciences, as well as public health and policy content, with an aim toward improving societal health outcomes. Students will experience an integrative approach to health from the first week of medical school. Other innovations include a strong career preparation course with a scholarly project, a longitudinal clerkship, translational science intersessions, transition courses at milestones in the curriculum, and improved assessment and evaluation.

[Source from John Hopkins Medicine]

According to Dr. Mohan Swami the University of both schools will commence their first student intake in September 2011. The respective Dean has been appointed and will be expected to start working on January 2011.