Medicine and Surgery (Medicine and Technology)

To face the challenges posed by technological evolution and digital systems to the healthcare world, the 'Medicine and Surgery (alias Medicine & Technology)' course aims at offering a course that will train a 'new doctor'. This objective will be achived through a solid integration between 'medical' and 'engineering' knowledges (both of them already present at the University 'Politecnica delle Marche'), the use of cutting-edge technologies and highly realistic equipment (e. g. simulators, procedural software, analysis systems), the development of innovative and interactive teaching methods, attendance at highly concrete training structures (e. g. lab skills or bioengineering laboratories), also by using virtual reality.

The aim of the course is to integrate the classic medical training path with transdisciplinary skills common to the medical training and the biomedical engineering path. This will allow the doctor to develop an autonomous and critical reasoning capacity which, in addition to addressing complex problems in the clinical field and in the applications of technology and information analysis, will also enable the doctor to elaborate and internalize the relational and ethical aspects of this profession, taking care of the patients and finalizing technological innovation to the personalization of therapies, to the continuity of care and to the improvement of life quality. To reach these objectives, didactic/scientific foreign collaborations will be also strengthened, with the aim of broadening medical and engineering experiences and enriching the knowledge and use of alternative therapeutic techniques.

The course differs from other existing courses of the same class (LM/41 - Medicine and Surgery) because it aims to train a doctor who is not only an expert user of modern technologies applied to the different fields of clinical medicine and translational scientific-technological research, but also an active collaborator in the conceptualization of new and advanced technologies. These goals will be achieved by focusing on an 'innovative medicine' capable of exploiting tools and systems of high technological complexity (genomics, bioinformatics, big data, artificial intelligence, remote technologies).

The proposed training path is organized to combine the skills of the traditional doctor with the essential ones of the biomedical engineer, offering an integrated path between the Master's Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery (LM/41) and the Three-year Degree Course in Biomedical Engineering (L/8). This integration is foreseen for the entire 6-year period of the course, by alternating the two cultural areas. The first 3 years will be aimed at fostering the integration between the medical and bioengineering disciplines, while the last 3 years will be mainly dedicated to the clinical training and professionalizing/enabling training activities, which will be more focused on clinical practice, with particular attention to the use of the integrated approaches learned during the first 3 years.

During the training course, students of Medicine and Surgery (alias Medicine & Technology) will also acquire basic knowledge and skills in engineering, through the acquisition of 30 University Educational Credits, which exceed the 360 ​​credits required for the Medicine and Surgery degree. In this way, the course will allow the Medicine and Surgery (alias Medicine & Technology) students to request, at the end of the 6 years, the degree in Biomedical Engineering.

Doctor

Function in a work context:

The doctor must have in-depth knowledge of the human body, together with scientific and technical skills, such as the identification of the symptoms and causes of pathological manifestations, combined with the knowledge of therapeutic tools and the great ability to communicate with patients and collaborate with colleagues and other health professionals. MEDICINE AND SURGERY (ALIAS MEDICINE & TECHNOLOGY) graduates must be able to:
- apply their knowledge, have the ability to identify and correct lifestyle risk behaviors, applying strategies for the prevention and early diagnosis of diseases, also taking advantages of technological tools;
- identify the pathological processes and the related diagnostic paths, evaluating and choosing the best available technologies, in relation to the setting complexity;
- collaborate to improve available technologies, in order to obtain greater diagnostic efficacy, and to support the diagnostic paths with virtual simulation and artificial intelligence tools;
- choose and apply therapeutic measures for the most common pathologies, by using the most innovative technologies;
- apply engineering methodologies and technologies to medical-biological problems;
- measure, analytically describe, analyze and develop numerical models for the simulation and resolution of medical-biological problems;
- identify and select among the new biomedical technologies the most suitable for a clinical application, supervising their application in controlled environments;
- apply specific technical skills to stimulate and carry out the design of innovative medical devices.
The doctor must know the structure and organization of the National Health Service and always operate with prudence, expertise and diligence.
Skills associated with the function

The doctor is the professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental impairments. The medical profession has always been characterized by the direct relationship with the patient. The main role of the doctor is to drive the patient toward the recovery, by passing through the disease. However, more and more often, patients’ treatment requires the involvement of different professional figures and multidisciplinary activities. The main areas of expertise of the MEDICINE AND SURGERY (ALIAS MEDICINE & TECHNOLOGY) graduate are:
- the prevention, which involves health education and vaccinations;
- the treatment, which includes anamnesis, namely, the collection of information on the lifestyle habits and state of health of the patient and his/her family, the medical examination, the prescription of laboratory tests, the diagnosis and therapy;
- the ability to clearly and gently communicate with the patient and his/her family, even in international and multicultural contests;
- the assistance, which includes the patient’s follow-up, to periodically verify the effectiveness of the therapy;
- in-depth knowledge of advanced technologies and ability to design personalized therapies through the integration with complex technological systems;
- the ability to tackle typical issues of the medicine of the future, such as artificial intelligence in the medical research and in the clinic practice, precision medicine and regenerative medicine;
- the use of knowledge on biomedical field, in order to provide a clinical, diagnostic and therapeutic evaluation;
- the optimization of therapeutic outcomes based on the potential of data analysis and machine learning techniques, and the use of new materials and advanced therapeutic devices;
- the improvement of the doctor-patient relationship, by driving the education toward the territory, the community and the knowledge of the disease, to reach a greater awareness of the potential offered by technologies and intelligent systems, also to the purpose of establishing patient-taylored therapies.

Employment opportunities:

The MEDICINE AND SURGERY (ALIAS MEDICINE & TECHNOLOGY) graduate is a doctor with a great ability to handle new technologies and, therefore, to define patient-taylored therapies. At the same time, the MEDICINE AND SURGERY (ALIAS MEDICINE & TECHNOLOGY) graduate acquired biomedical engineer skills, therefore he/she can take partto the development of innovative solutions in the biomedical fields. At the end of the 6 years, the MEDICINE AND SURGERY (ALIAS MEDICINE & TECHNOLOGY) graduates can practice the medical profession, specialize, continue their studies for a PhD or to obtain a Master's Degree in Biomedical Engineering, perform biomedical research or work in the industrial field. Specifically, the MEDICINE AND SURGERY (ALIAS MEDICINE & TECHNOLOGY) graduates can work in the following settings:
- territory medicine, either as a general practitioner or in public/private specialist clinics;
- structures dedicated to the management of chronicity, also by using the telemedicine;
- hospitals and specialist centres;
- universities and research centres;
- national and international health organizations;
- companies in the pharmaceutical and biomedical field;
- health services management structures;
- to get access to the Postgraduate Schools of the medical area.