New Technologies Delight Visitors at HKU Information Day 2024
HKUMed welcomed thousands of prospective students onto campus on Saturday for the University of Hong Kong Information Day 2024.
Visitors were invited to explore the laboratories and facilities on the Sassoon Road Campus to learn about the Faculty of Medicine’s undergraduate courses.
Speaking at the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) admissions talk, Professor CS Lau, Dean of Medicine, welcomed the visitors and emphasised the huge opportunities available to the future doctors.
“I hope our future graduates will not only perform surgeries in hospitals and see patients in clinics, but also explore innovation and technology, administration, create policy, and even train other medical professionals. There are many different opportunities to develop your potential.”
Activities and workshops available on the day ranged from learning how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation to acupuncture demonstrations.
The aspiring healthcare professionals and scientists also learnt about the admissions process for their favoured courses and received advice on their applications in admissions consultations.
Charlotte Yip, who was attending Information Day with a friend, said she is interested in how HKUMed has folded technological innovations into the curriculum.
“I like how HKUMed focuses a lot on technological innovations, [such as] applying AI into the curriculum. I think that’s more important than just sitting in a lecture and learning from a teacher,” she said. “[This type of learning] is very important for you to retain knowledge and be able to apply it in a clinical setting.”
A selection of the new technologies used in teaching at HKUMed were on display for visitors to try for themselves, such as virtual reality headsets and digital anatomy tools.
Dr Masayo Kotaka, Senior Lecturer in the School of Biomedical Sciences was helping prospective students to explore the structure of DNA and proteins using VR goggles.
“Inside the VR environment, they can walk into the structure, walk into the molecule and have a look into the different bonding,” she said. “It gives them a better idea of what the folds are and what the structure looks like.”
Prospective students were also able to explore the more traditional teaching methods in the Anatomy and Dissection Laboratory and Museum that houses human specimens.
Peter Yuen, a third-year MBBS student and an anatomy near-peer teacher, said he was sharing his experiences of life as a medical student with curious visitors in the laboratory.
“Dissection is an invaluable experience, because of how these cadavers were once living and the fact they are contributing to our medical studies, we have to honour and respect them by fully preparing for these dissections. And also thoroughly studying anatomy as a subject and using that as a foundation to expand our medical studies,” he said.
Aspiring pharmacists had a chance to learn the intricacies of filling capsules for medicines in a workshop led by the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy.
“We want to let them have hands-on experience of how to fill the capsules so they know the process is not that easy, particularly when you have multiple ingredients inside the capsule, you have to make sure they’re evenly mixed and evenly filled, and that’s quite challenging,” said Dr Johnny Wong, Lecturer in the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy.
At 3 Sassoon Road, visitors explored the Nursing Clinical Skills Laboratory and learnt about Chinese medicine from herbal medicines to cupping and ear acupressure.
Learn more about HKUMed’s undergraduate programmes.
