Champaign, Illinois – Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CI MED) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is leading a first-of-its-kind global network to revolutionize medicine through engineering-based solutions to health problems across the globe.
The new Global Consortium of Innovation and Engineering in Medicine is an international collaborative that aims to accelerate the development of innovative solutions that impact human health by leveraging expertise from across disciplines and geographic boundaries.
This collaborative is well-positioned to drive innovation in medicine and medical education through the combined expertise of medical and engineering schools, universities, researchers and students, industry and government leaders, philanthropists, and foundations. The consortium draws on the same vision that led to the formation of Carle Illinois College of Medicine in 2015, as the world’s first engineering-based college of medicine. Integrating the interdisciplinary lens of technology, engineering, innovation, and medicine, the CI MED model seeks to better train the next generation of physician-innovators to create impact in local communities and across the globe.
“Currently, over 40 medical schools around the world – including several here in the United States – are developing curricula, programs, tracks, and even new medical schools designed through this novel interdisciplinary lens of medicine, engineering, and innovation,” CI MED Dean Mark Cohen said. “Our shared goal is to adapt medical education and learners to the technologically immersed world we now live in and educate a new kind of physician, uniquely trained to build and lead interdisciplinary teams that can better solve problems in health care with an engineering and entrepreneurial mindset.”
The consortium creates a robust framework for global student exchanges, faculty research, and streamlined, cost-efficient processes to conduct clinical trials for breakthrough treatments by accessing a global data network and improving global processes for regulatory data collection. The participation of industry and government leaders will ensure that innovations springing from the consortium are developed and implemented efficiently to accelerate their impact for societal benefit.
CI MED has developed relationships with several top international medical schools and institutions helping launch the global consortium including National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) in Taiwan, National Taiwan University, Trinity College in Dublin Ireland, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (NTU Singapore), Universita Campus Bio-Medico di Roma in Rome, Italy, Tokyo Medical and Dental University in Japan, Gangwal School of Medical Sciences and Technology at the Indian Institutes for Technology in Kanpur, India, and University of Pretoria in South Africa among others. In addition to these and many US universities, dozens of public, private, and government entities joined a recent kick-off meeting to explore the opportunities and benefits of membership in this unique collaborative.
The showcase event of the Consortium’s work will be an annual Global Summit, the first of which is scheduled for April 6-8, 2025, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, bringing to Illinois an international audience of health innovation leaders and world-class medical education experts. “At the summit, we will launch a first-of-its-kind global health grand innovation challenge competition where our medical students, leading multidisciplinary student teams, will compete against the most innovative student teams from top universities around the world to pitch solutions to major challenges in global health, where the winning solutions can then be piloted and validated across this new global network,” Cohen said.
The pitch competition will address health challenges such as AI applications to improve outcomes in rural health or medically underserved areas; solutions that improve early disease detection or slow disease progression for chronic diseases like cancer, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, infections, pediatric diseases, conditions in aging populations and others; and developing low-cost diagnostics, devices, or therapeutic solutions that can have global scalability.
Winning solutions presented at the Global Health Grand Innovation Challenge competition will be awarded funding to pilot and validate their solutions across the new global network of medical schools and hospitals, with insights and guidance from industry and regulatory agencies. This approach will accelerate bringing new solutions to the bedside to benefit patients in Illinois and around the globe.
Philanthropic support of the global health challenge is crucial to amplifying the consortium’s impact and its ability to move ground-breaking solutions to the bedside for real societal benefit, Cohen said.
Register for the Global Consortium April 6 - 8, 2025 here!
Carle Illinois College of Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign represents a new concept in the field of healthcare education, with Innovation as the cornerstone of our curriculum, emphasizing human factors, design thinking, medical technologies, and entrepreneurship. The college was formed in 2015 as a partnership between Illinois and Carle Health System.