Did this ever happen? Any chance of Rice collaboration? Seems to be as much up our alley as theirs.



Texas A&M University announced plans on June 24, 2016 for a new engineering medical school in Houston. The school would be at Houston Methodist Hospital and would start in fall 2017. The inaugural class would accept 50 students, and the school initially plans to hire 25 faculty members. A&M expects to use 75,000 square feet of instructional and research space in the Texas Medical Center. The new Texas A&M University Engineering Medicine School at Houston Methodist Hospital — or EnMed — will aim to “educate a new kind of doctor … who will invent transformational technology for health care,” A&M said in a statement. EnMed will be part of Texas A&M College of Medicine’s MD program and the College of Engineering.

“The medicine of tomorrow will not be practiced in the way that it is today. Medicine is not just about biology, it requires technology development,” John Sharp, chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, said in a statement. “This school would not only train doctors, but allow them to invent new products and take their inventions to the marketplace. EnMed would expand the health care technology market at the Texas Medical Center. The potential economic impact to the region would be huge.”

M. Katherine Banks, Texas A&M engineering vice chancellor and dean of engineering, said in the statement that all EnMed students “will be expected to invent something transformational before they graduate.”

“This is a paradigm shift,” Banks said. “The major health care challenges of the future will not only depend on bioengineering, but also require mechanical, chemical, electrical, and computer engineers. There are other programs that link medicine with bioengineering, but this is different.”

Creation of the school is pending certain approvals, A&M noted, but it did not go into detail about them.

First class is set to start in 2019, I think.
https://enmed.tamu.edu/

Sounds somewhat similar to our own RBC.