The rector of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Daniel Crespo, and his management team will present to the campus educational community this month an innovative project for a technological campus, to offer health studies. In particular, the board of directors has convened the meeting of the board of governors on April 24 to explain the proposal to promote a degree in medicine in the near future. If they get the green light from the educational community (teaching and research staff, administration and services, and students must vote on it) they would start designing the study plan.
The project is just an incipient idea, a degree limited to 50 places, with a unique training for its high content in technological and digital subjects, which would have the eventual collaboration of the Consorci Sanitari de Terrassa.
It should be remembered that the university is polytechnic, with prestigious engineering schools, although it also has, precisely on its campus in Terrassa, the faculty of optics and optometry.
The UPC would like to start the first year of medical students in the 2026-2027 academic year. However, if the project is approved on April 24, it would have a tortuous administrative journey, since it must obtain not only the approval of the quality agency for university studies (AQU) but also the agreement of the Interuniversity Council of Catalonia (CIC), in which all Catalan universities and the Ministry of Universities participate. Finally, it should have the authorization of the Council of Universities of Madrid, which depends on the ministries of Universities and Health. This is so because this degree is linked to certain internal medical residency (MIR) positions.
Some of the Catalan universities that already offer these degrees, when this newspaper has asked them about this issue, have stated that they are skeptical of the expansion of this offer, taking into account the needs of doctors in the future and the type of studies of health professionals, in which the skills of caring for the person are taken care of.
Also, without knowing in advance the characteristics of the project promoted by Rector Crespo, they consider that it would be more positive to collaborate between existing medical faculties with those studying engineering or data sciences.
If this faculty is created, it would be the tenth to offer medicine in Catalonia. The others are UB Clínic, UB Bellvitge, UAB, UPF, UdG, UdL and URV, in addition to UVic-UCC, the last to open its faculty with a special economic regime, and the International University of Catalonia (UIC ).
In addition to the UPC, there are two private universities that have shown their interest in offering this same degree, which is much in demand among students and which generally requires a high cut-off grade to enter. These are the Abat Oliba CEU University and the Ramon Llull University, from Blanquerna.
The Sant Pau CEU Foundation, owner of Abat Oliba, created the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences in Barcelona this same year, based on the existing psychology studies and a master’s degree in dentistry, which are the health branch. It wants to offer, in addition to medicine, nursing and physiology. The demand to teach these studies is already on the table of the CIC, but the initial forecast to teach this degree has been postponed to September 2026 or 2027. Instead, nursing could open it in 2025.
For its part, Blanquerna is considering opening an offer for 80 students and the anticipated start course would be 2026/27. Sources from this university pointed out that the new degree in Medicine from Blanquerna-URL aims to “train professionals to practice High Tech, High Touch medicine, humane scientific and scientifically humane medicine”.
This academic year 2023-2024 the Catalan university system has increased places by 12% compared to the previous academic year, and has added 146 more places. A total of 1,340 first-year places have been offered, of which 1,100 are from public universities and 230 from the Universitat de Vic-Central de Catalunya and the UIC.
