“But I have to emphasise that we do not only need the third medical school but a third medical school that is good and with high quality.”
The government would continue to communicate with interested universities and build a mechanism to assess which proposals would be the most ideal, he added.
He expressed hope that the third medical school could also achieve a global ranking of 40th or higher, similar to or even surpassing the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
The Post reported earlier this month that the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) was discussing establishing a medical school in the city with Imperial College London.
In the same month, both the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and CUHK also announced plans to launch a new medicine graduate programme.
HKU medical dean expressed confidence the faculty could expand the annual intake of medical students from the current 295 to an eventual target of 400.
Separately, Polytechnic University and Baptist University have also indicated their interest in establishing a medical school.
Former Hospital Authority chairman Anthony Wu Ting-yuk said earlier that Hong Kong should set up its third medical school by 2027 and target first-degree holders to enlarge the candidate pool and help alleviate a shortage of doctors.
Hong Kong currently has two medical schools established in the University of Hong Kong and Chinese University respectively.
Lo said the government must ensure the entire proposal for the third medical school was “feasible” and whether the school could achieve its targets for talent training, given the vast resources being invested.
He said he was “very happy” to see three universities were interested in establishing a new medical school, but added that it involved “complicated arrangements” and it “was not possible to approve it with a few words”.
But the authorities would need to “carefully assess” whether the schools’ proposals match Hong Kong’s overall interests, and whether its sources of students and teachers, campus, teaching hospital and curriculum were in line with the Medical Council’s requirements, he said.
“At the end of the day, there is something we have to understand – after the medical students complete their training in Hong Kong, will they be able to be registered locally?” he said.
“They need to be approved by the Medical Council. It is not as simple as opening a medical school and training a few students.”
Lo said there were overseas examples where a new medical school could not be accredited and its students were unable to be registered locally and had to take registration exams in other countries.
He stressed that it would require careful planning and adequate preparation to establish a “good medical school”.
“We have to seriously consider what the best proposal is because it not only involves financial investment, but most importantly, it will utilise our rare and crucial educational resources,” he said.
Lo cited Chinese University’s medical school as an example of how “complicated” the process of opening a new institution could be, saying it took six years to pass the proposal in the Legislative Council and another seven years before the launch.
He said before its teaching hospital Prince of Wales Hospital was opened in 1984, three years after the medical school was established, its teaching staff had to set up their offices in cargo containers at Union Hospital.