UNIL and EPFL offer students a gateway to a medical degree
© 2018 EPFL / Alain Herzog
The University of Lausanne (UNIL) will introduce a gateway program this fall that gives EPFL students in Life Sciences and Technology as well as university students in biology the opportunity to earn a Master’s degree in medicine. With this initiative, EPFL aims to prepare graduates for the digital and technology-driven healthcare of the future.
UNIL and EPFL have coordinated their efforts to create a one-year gateway program for students with a Bachelor’s degree in biology or bioengineering to join the Master’s in medicine program at UNIL. This initiative comes in response to the new healthcare challenges arising from rapid advancements in technology and biology as well as to the Swiss government’s 2017–2020 program to increase the number of medical graduates in the country.
In September 2017, EPFL began offering Bachelor’s students in Life Sciences and Technology a series of courses to help them prepare for the entrance exam for the UNIL gateway program, which will start with the 2018 school year. EPFL hopes that this initiative will quintuple the number of its students enrolled in medical-degree programs that train them for tomorrow’s digital, personalized and technology-driven healthcare.
A highly selective program
The gateway program is highly selective and is not a shortcut to a medical degree. Students must invest a great deal of time and energy to take the prerequisite courses, acquire the knowledge needed for medical studies and stay committed for the full length of the program.
Around thirty students are currently enrolled for the entrance exam to be held in June 2018. But only those who pass the exam and obtain their Bachelor’s degree can enter the gateway program, which will be run by UNIL’s School of Biology and Medicine (FBM). There they will take many of the courses regularly taken by third-year Bachelor’s in medicine students, as well as specific courses to get them up to speed in preclinical matters and clinical methods. Then they will take the same final exams as third-year Bachelor’s students; if they pass, they can enter UNIL’s Master’s program in medicine.
Once in the Master’s program, the gateway students will be able to keep their close ties with engineering and biology – they can do their Master’s project at an EPFL lab or at a fundamental sciences lab at UNIL.
Looking ahead
After completing their university courses and obtaining a Swiss federal diploma in medicine, these freshly-minted doctors will be fully qualified medical professionals. The gateway program is designed to produce a new generation of doctors trained in the latest advancements in biomedicine so they can respond to future challenges in areas such as personalized medicine, epidemiological big-data analysis and the many new developments in biotechnology.