Mexico City's UNAM University Opened The World's Largest Robotic Training Center - Medgadget - www.medgadget.com

Mexico City's UNAM University Opened The World's Largest Robotic Training Center - Medgadget - www.medgadget.com: "Faced with a growing number of medical students and few training hospitals, this Mexican university is turning to robotic patients to better train future doctors.
The robots are dummies complete with mechanical organs, synthetic blood and mechanical breathing systems.
'The country's rapid increase of medical students has not kept up with the number of medical facilities,' said Joaquin Lopez Barcena, an associate dean at the university's medical school. 'This a very a good learning opportunity for our students.'
The $1.3 million facility has 24 robotic patients and a computer software program that can simulate illnesses ranging from diabetes to a heart attack.
For Paola Mendoza Cortez, a first-year medical student, the robotic patients offer peace of mind.
'I would feel nervous if this was (a) real patient,' said Mendoza after drawing blood from a plastic arm. 'With this (dummy patient) I can practice many times.'
With close to 15,000 enrolled students, UNAM has one of the largest medical school in Latin America. There are about 70,000 medical students enrolled in Mexico, according to the Mexican association of medical schools.
Read more at Mexico City's UNAM University web page (translated to English with Google Language Tools)..."

A Hot Trend on Campus: Majoring in Health Care - New York Times

A Hot Trend on Campus: Majoring in Health Care - New York Times: "A Hot Trend on Campus: Majoring in Health Care

By ALAN FINDER
Published: February 5, 2006
Eighteen months after the University of Colorado created a department to prepare undergraduates for a broad range of careers in health care, from medicine to physical therapy to physician assistant, that department already has 1,200 students, making it the second most popular on campus.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image

Seth Wenig for The New York Times
Vanessa Fernandez, a graduate of Stony Brook University's health science program, now sees many alternatives to applying for medical school. A similar program at Stony Brook University, on Long Island, has grown to 370 graduating students last year from 35 four years ago. And at Marquette University, which in 1997 became among the first to offer a basic science degree in human health, the course of study has become more popular than any other.
'It's the fastest-growing major that this campus has ever seen,' said William E. Cullinan, associate chairman of the department of biomedical sciences at Marquette, in Milwaukee. 'It just exploded beyond anyone's imagination.'
Flagship state universities, and private institutions other than the elite, have long drawn large numbers of working- and middle-class students with a pragmatic bent. But university officials say the current generation is particularly attuned to selecting majors with strong career possibilities.
Add to that the plentiful supply of jobs in the growing health care industry, and a result is that health science programs have been taking off more "