The annual rituals of the festive season and the rapidly-approaching close of 2017 provide the chance to reflect and to look to the future.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
A blog by Professor Iain T Cameron, Dean of Medicine<\/strong><\/p>\n We live in turbulent times, with widespread disruptive change impacting on all that we do.\u00a0 But, whilst change can be unsettling, it\u2019s often for the better, and brings new opportunities.\u00a0 Two such opportunities are the expansion of undergraduate medical student numbers and the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy.<\/p>\n Recognising the need to increase the supply of doctors, in 2016, the Secretary of State for Health proposed expansion of medical student numbers in England by 1,500.\u00a0 The call for applications from existing and new providers of medical education requested a focus on widening access from under-represented social groups and from geographical regions that often struggle to attract trainees, and on meeting future workforce needs – including enhancing recruitment to general practice and psychiatry.\u00a0 Such challenges aren\u2019t new.\u00a0 In November 1967, the decision to award a new medical school to Southampton was announced following the report of the Todd Commission.\u00a0 As explained in the foreword of Southampton Medical School: the First 50 Years<\/em>1<\/sup>, the Commission was \u201cresponding to a predicted shortfall in the medical workforce, a requirement to deliver more care in the community and a need for an innovative approach to medical education with a focus on clinical skills, mental health and the link between health and social care.\u201d\u00a0 Building on our strong track record of pioneering medical education and widening access, we look forward to the first cohort of 19 additional students joining Southampton in September 2018.<\/p>\n The recent Industrial Strategy White Paper2<\/sup> also provides significant opportunities for medicine, health and life sciences.\u00a0 The Strategy outlines five key themes (ideas, people, infrastructure, business environment, and places) and four grand challenges (artificial intelligence, clean growth, ageing society, and future mobility).\u00a0 The Strategy will be delivered through four sector deals.\u00a0 The Life Sciences Sector Deal3<\/sup>, published on 6th<\/sup> December 2017, demonstrates the pivotal role that life sciences will play, with actions to increase investment in R&D; to strengthen the environment for clinical trials; to enhance digital diagnostics and precision medicine; and to fuel investment by life sciences companies in the UK.\u00a0 Central to this will be the creation of regional clusters; collaboration between universities, industry and the NHS to improve patient care; and reinforcing the skills base in the UK\u2019s life sciences workforce.\u00a0 As stated in the ambitious Sector Deal, \u201cNowhere is innovation more life-changing than in medicine, healthcare and their associated fields.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking back over the past 12 months, we\u2019ve had another great year and are now ranked 81st<\/sup> in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for Clinical, Pre-Clinical and Health disciplines \u2013 11th<\/sup> of the UK universities in the top 100.\u00a0 Significant accomplishments in 2017 included the graduation of our first students on the MSc Genomics programme, record levels of external research awards and individual fellowships, and reaching the final phase of the \u00a325 million campaign for the Centre for Cancer Immunology, with the official opening scheduled in the spring.\u00a0 Congratulations and thank you to all of you for your contributions to these and many other tremendous achievements.<\/p>\n Finally, it\u2019s a strange feeling to be on my last lead-up to Christmas as Dean.\u00a0 Looking back, much has happened since I moved over the road from the Princess Anne Hospital to the Head of the School of Medicine\u2019s office in December 2003!\u00a0 Thank you once more for your support and for the important part you\u2019ve played in the Faculty\u2019s successes over the years. \u00a0It\u2019s a huge privilege to work with so many dedicated and talented students and staff – and it\u2019s been a particular pleasure to celebrate the achievements of new graduates each year and to see colleagues flourish as their careers develop.<\/p>\n Despite external and internal challenges, there continue to be many opportunities for Medicine across education, research and enterprise and we have much to look forward to.<\/p>\n In the meantime, I hope that you have a great break over the holidays and I wish you all the best for the New Year.<\/p>\n Iain T Cameron<\/p>\n The annual rituals of the festive season and the rapidly-approaching close of 2017 provide the chance to reflect and to look to the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2122,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,3,15,14,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careers","category-education","category-professional","category-professor-iain-cameron","category-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/97\/2017\/12\/Original.jpg?fit=1393%2C930&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8r5I4-4S","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n