On July 6, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences released the “STEM (2022) & ASTEM (2018-2022) for Chinese Medical Schools and Hospitals". WMU ranked 16th in the STEM rankings of Chinese medical schools, making it the 4th among the medical schools jointly built by the National Health Commission, ministries, and provincial governments. In the STEM rankings of Chinese hospitals, three affiliated hospitals of our university have entered the national Top 100. Among them, the affiliated Eye Hospital ranked 56th, ranking first among all eye hospitals nationwide for five consecutive years. The First Affiliated Hospital ranked 59th, 9 places higher than last year. The Second Affiliated Hospital ranked 80th, flat on last year. In the ASTEM rankings for Chinese hospitals, the affiliated Eye Hospital, the First Affiliated Hospital, and the Second Affiliated Hospital ranked 46th, 68th, and 76th respectively.

According to the national Top 100 ranking lists of 31 disciplines released, WMU’s various disciplines have made steady progress. The ophthalmology of the affiliated Eye Hospital of WMU ranked second in China, with its scientific and technological conditions topped the rankings. A total of 25 disciplines of the First Affiliated Hospital of WMU have entered the national Top 100, among which burn surgery ranked 6th, critical care medicine, emergency medicine, anesthesiology, gastroenterology, and neurosurgery ranked 19th, 20th, 20th, 26th, and 28th respectively, showing nationally leading scientific and technological strength. With 26 disciplines listed in the national top 100, the Second Affiliated Hospital has set new highs in its number of top 100 disciplines. The anesthesiology, pediatrics, orthopedic surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology ranked 8th, 13th, 14th, and 22nd respectively. In particular, the five-year Accumulation Science and Technology Evaluation Metrics (ASTEM) of its anesthesiology department has achieved a breakthrough and entered the top 5 for the first time.

It is reported that the Science and Technology Evaluation Metrics (STEM) for Chinese Medical Schools and Chinese Hospitals is a scientific and technological evaluation system with Chinese characteristics for hospitals and medical colleges. STEM has referenced methodologies of internationally well-known rankings such as the QS World University Rankings and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. With an emphasis on objective evaluations, it represents the highest level of China's innovation capacity in medical scientific research. The combination of STEM (2022) and ASTEM (2018-2022) reflected the responsiveness and continuity of the evaluation, jointly guiding and promoting the development of China's medical scientific and technological innovation.

In recent years, WMU has further promoted the university's scientific and technological innovation and served local and regional economic development, adhered to a practical and high-end approach, and strengthened organized scientific research, which have provided a strong impetus for the university's "double first-class" construction. The university has actively planned and given full play to the supporting role of high-level platforms in the development of disciplines: in 2022, it established the first National Engineering Research Center in the field of growth factors in China; in 2023, it established the National Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Drugs and Large-scale Preparation (the only one among provincial universities in Zhejiang Province) and the Key Laboratory of Pediatric Anesthesiology of the Ministry of Education. The university has carried out clinical problem-oriented basic research and accelerated the key core technology research urgently needed for national strategies: in 2022, the university obtained its first NSFC Major Program project, won two NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund projects in the same year for the first time, and set a new record of nine NSFC major and key projects. The university has optimized the strategic objectives of performance evaluation and incubated high-quality scientific and technological achievements. Researchers at WMU have continuously published research results in top international journals such as Nature, Science, and JAMA as the first or corresponding authors. With the goal of stimulating the potential vitality for the commercialization of scientific and technological achievements, the university has focused on the innovation of biomedicine and clinical devices and passed a symbolic milestone in the commercialization of major scientific and technological achievements with a contract value of over 10 million yuan for one single case. The contract value of commercialization of scientific and technological advances in 2022 reached 125 million yuan for the first time.

Text translated by Cai Lingchen and reviewed by Sun You