Dubai: The College of Medicine at Mohammad Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU) will on January 31 open applications for its six-year Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) programme for the academic year beginning in September.
Princess Haya Bint Al Hussain, chairperson of the Dubai Health Care City Authority (DHCA) and wife of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, on Thursday officially opened the College of Medicine and its degree programme when visiting the Dubai Healthcare City pavilion at Arab Health Exhibition and Congress.
Applications should be submitted prior to March 31.
Meanwhile, in a keynote address at the Leaders in Healthcare Conference of Arab Health 2016 on Thursday, Princess Haya emphasised the need to focus on personalised health care.
She said it was time to discard the traditional one-size-fits-all approach in health care and go for individualised therapies based on a person’s unique genetic make-up to allow for precise and cost efficient results.
Highlighting how personalised therapies could be cost efficient along with being more efficacious, Princess Haya said: “The International Diabetes Federation estimates that the disease costs Dh7,000 per person in the UAE. At approximately 800,000 cases tabulated for 2014, the seemingly negligible per person figure becomes dangerously alarming at a total of Dh5.6 billion. Imagine what we could do with this money if we did not have to spend it catering to a disease that could be curbed through the synergies of modern medicine, diagnostics and pharmacology.”
However, she pointed out that many of the genes that predisposed us towards certain diseases could be modified and good genes conserved for future generations. She emphasised on the role latest technological advances could play in computing health data and making health systems more efficient as people could with new health care apps and other sophisticated technology move towards making medicine preventive rather than reactive .
“We should keep the genes that hardwire us to enthusiasm, honesty and endeavour, and use those as drivers for change of those genes that predispose us to illnesses and long term conditions. It is our responsibility to future generations to hand down genetic material that is better than the one we have inherited,” she said.
