Admissions process opens for newly accredited Carle Illinois College of Medicine

The Carle Illinois College of Medicine, the first engineering-based medical school, has received preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and is recruiting students for its first class. Its inaugural faculty consists of nearly 100 members, including several ECE ILLINOIS faculty and affiliates: [profile:rbashir], [profile:boppart], [profile:vgruev], [profile:oelze], [profile:yvlasov]

The Carle Illinois College of Medicine hosted a day-long open house last week and registration is open for a second event on November 18 for anyone interested in learning about the college.

The first cohort of 32 students, who will begin classes in July 2018, will receive full four-year scholarships funded by donors and friends of the college. Admissions information and materials for the MD program are available online.

“We believe that engineering and technology will revolutionize the way we deliver health care,” said Dr. King Li, the dean of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. “We want to increase quality and accessibility while decreasing costs. We aim to produce physician-innovators and physician-leaders who can leverage engineering and technology in their medical practices to facilitate this change in health care delivery.”

The college is a partnership between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Carle Health System, based in Urbana. The case-driven, problem-based, active-learning curriculum will integrate engineering principles with medical education and clinical experience from day one.

To encourage curiosity and creativity, the college will require students to develop ideas for innovation in each of their clinical rotations. Each student will expand upon one of their ideas as their capstone project. To translate their innovations to market, students will have access to entrepreneurial and intellectual property resources on campus.

The faculty includes distinguished researchers and educators from across the University of Illinois campus and skilled physicians at Carle Health System. The breadth of expertise will allow students and researchers to innovate many aspects of health care delivery – design, economics and communication, for example – alongside technology and medicine.

“Illinois has a culture of collaboration. We have many institutes and centers that are set up to encourage that,” Dr. Li said. “But the entire Carle Illinois College of Medicine is designed to be the catalyst for health science research at the University of Illinois, to improve health for all.”

Find the original article on the Illinois New Bureau site.