Applied Medical Sciences BSc: Ten Years and Counting

The first AMS intake in September 2014 consisted of 30 students and was the first basic Science BSc programme offered by the Faculty. Over the years the AMS programme has diversified and grown. It has welcomed 6 sister programmes and the 2023 cohort is approximately 10 times greater than the 2014 cohort. There are around 700 students currently enrolled throughout the programmes paying fees of well over £13M per year.
The story starts a little before June 2013, but the programme Directors Profs Kevin Moore and David Spratt become involved at this point. A new type of degree was envisaged - to fuse science with medicine and produce scientists that had a good basic understanding of the human body, how it works, how it goes wrong and how we treat it. Pairing this with basic science modules and an emphasis on creativity and teamwork, an original and innovative degree was born. With these principles in mind, over the summer of 2013, the entire 3-year BSc was planned including 34 new modules. New teaching staff and administrators were recruited, and a tight, focused team began work on creating content for these modules. The programme team took the decision to use a flipped teaching approach (a fairly new concept at UCL then) and built a studio to film almost 400 interactive “storylines” to support the face-to-face teaching. Following the launch in 2014 six new BScs were written around this concept and launched over the next few years: Nutrition, Cancer Biomedicine, Sports & Exercise, Infection & Immunity, Medical Innovation & Enterprise and Medical Sciences & Engineering. Today the programme runs an Integrated Medical Science 1st year where all these students are taught together and differentiate at end of year 1, and in subsequent years go on to specialize in their chosen subject. The graduates have gone on to do amazing things: Medics, Dentists, PhDs, city finance consultants EU executives and Editors. Their enthusiasm and research acumen have also been a feature and 26 peer-reviewed publications have arisen from student projects. 
With ten years as Applied Medical Science programme Co-Director Prof Kevin Moore has decided to stand down. We would like to thank Kevin for his huge commitment and dedication to the programme. It is very clear that without Kevin’s vision and drive the programme would not have got off the ground nor been as groundbreaking and successful as it has been. Thank you, Kevin.