Aptly named startup NewMed plans to kick off a ‘GP-first’ Doctor of Medicine program by 2026.
A startup with aspirations to become Australia’s newest medical school will see doctors-in-training do more clinical hours in primary care than hospitals, if it gets its way.
NewMed School isn’t technically a medical school just yet, but it has lodged an application with the national Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to become one.
All going to plan, it will take in its first cohort of 95 students in 2026. The program looks to be a four-year course.
Speaking to The Medical Republic, CEO and dean-to-be Professor Stephen Tobin said that while the small intake of doctors won’t fix the workforce crisis, it’s evident that the system was in need.
“I think it’d be reasonable to say the consensus is that we need more graduate doctors,” Professor Tobin told TMR.
“The big states – Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia – didn’t fill their intern places for 2024.
“There are not enough graduates at that early level and I think it’s well known that there’s not enough general practitioners.
“That gets all magnified when you go off into regional, rural and remote areas.”
Juxtaposed to the conventional hospital-heavy training programs, NewMed will focus on general practice.
“If you look at the clinical hours that we’ve scheduled… the number of [general practice] hours is greater than the number of hospital hours,” said Professor Tobin.
“Our program will be general practice first, whereas the traditional model is hospital first with a bit of general practice somewhere along the way.”
Medical students doing the program would do a half-day in general practice each week during their first year, one day per week in their second year and three days per week in their third year.
The school will be run via a “distributed model”, with students allowed to study in their local community for the first two to three years of their degree.
“In addition to the technology-infused and academic-led blended learning in small groups, there will be three back-to-base, face to face weeks per year, and clinical placements in primary care,” NewMed’s frequently asked questions section reads.
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The week-long, in-person sessions, notionally taking place in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane or the Gold Coast, would complement the predominantly online teaching, said Professor Tobin.
According to Professor Tobin, the program would not exclude other states but, as a matter of practicality, had chosen to focus on the Eastern states and South Australia.
“In order to make sure we can deliver quality programs we intend to focus on those states,” he said.
“Having said that, we won’t exclude applicants from the other states, so we’ll need to have contingency plans to expand to perhaps WA and potentially Tasmania.”
NewMed has no plans to offer Commonwealth-funded places, meaning that any prospective students would have to pay not-yet-determined up-front fees.
The fees will be competitive, meaning lower, than similar courses at Bond and Macquarie, said Professor Tobin.
“We’ve budgeted for five full time scholarships, as well, as part of the initial intake,” he said.
While Professor Tobin said he wouldn’t want to foreshadow the outcome of NewMed’s application to become a University College, he did say the organisation was confident in the quality of its submission.
“The next big step is the Australian Medical Council,” he said.
“We are underway with the work towards what’s called a stage one submission, for October of this year.
“If that was considered satisfactory, we’d be invited to a full accreditation or stage two accreditation during 2025.
“We’ve got quite a program of work to find sufficient placements over the next few months to potentially start in 2026, but that work is underway.
“We’ve got general practitioners on our faculty who are helping with that.”
Former RACGP Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health faculty chair Dr Brad Murphy and Dr Natasha Yates – previously part of the Bond University GP faculty – are both listed as part of the NewMed team.
Professor Tobin, a surgeon who has held medical education roles at both the Royal Australasian College of Surgery and the Western Sydney University School of Medicine, is joined in the leadership team by former QUT Graduate Business School executive director Bob O’Connor as Chief Operating Officer and former Bond University vice chancellor Emeritus Professor Robert Stable.
Professor Tobin said that both the RACGP and ACRRM were supportive of the potential new medical school.
