The first-level discipline authorization point for the Master’s Degree in Clinical Medicine at South China University of Technology was approved in 2016 and is administered by the School of Medicine. According to the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) released by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in 2017, the Clinical Medicine discipline at SCUT has entered the global top 1%.

The program places strong emphasis on faculty development, forming a high-level teaching and research team with a moderate scale and rational structure through talent introduction, cultivation, and reliance on the professional expertise of affiliated hospitals. Currently, there are 274 master’s supervisors, including 171 professors. The faculty includes 1 national high-level overseas talent recruit, 2 Ministry of the Education “Changjiang Scholars” Distinguished Professors, 3 recipients of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, 4 candidates of the “National Hundred and Thousand and Ten Thousand Talent Project”, 2 recipients of the Education New Century Excellent Talents, 2 Chief Scientists of the National 973 Program, 5 principal investigators of the National Key R&D Program , 2 recipients of the National Excellent Young Scientists Fund , 5 recipients of the Guangdong Provincial Distinguished Young Scholars Fund. The program has also introduced 1 innovative research team under the “Pearl River Talent Program.”

The program has undertaken 80 major and key national-level research projects, including National Key R&D Programs, National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars, and key and joint fund projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, with total research funding amounting to  350 million yu. It hosts high-level research platforms such as the Ministry of Education Innovation Center for Fundamental Research on Development and Disease.

The program has established joint training and student exchange programs with internationally renowned universities such as the University of Cambridge and the University of Western Australia, fostering close collaboration in research and talent cultivation. During the evaluation period, the program enrolled 498 master’s students and awarded 345 Master of Medicine degrees, with one student receiving the Guangdong Outstanding Graduate award. Students published 64 papers in high-quality journals such as the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, presented 40 papers at international conferences including the World Conference on Lung Cancer, and received 15 professional awards.

The Affiliated Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital and the Second Affiliated Hospital (Guangzhou First People’s Hospital) possess extensive experience and mature systems in talent cultivation. They have enrolled postgraduate students since 1978 and 1996, respectively, and have a long history of training clinical master’s and doctoral students. Relying on the professional expertise of affiliated hospitals and leveraging three major strengths—research platform support at national, provincial, and municipal levels; comprehensive disciplinary advantages; and abundant clinical resources—the program adheres to three modes of integration: basic–clinical integration, “Medicine + X” multidisciplinary integration, and integration of research and teaching. Oriented toward national strategic needs and the frontiers of medical development, the program continuously refines its disciplinary directions, strengthens high-level talent teams, actively undertakes and cultivates major national and provincial research projects and high-level research platforms, enhances high-quality research output and translation, improves teaching and research conditions, and steadily elevates the quality of postgraduate education. The program aims to become an important base for scientific and technological innovation breakthroughs and talent cultivation in southern China.