The history of Xiangya Hospital

In 1906, Dr. Edward Hume, an expert in Internal Medicine and educator from the Yale-China Association, established “Yali Hospital”, one of the earliest western hospital in China. In 1913, with the support of Mr. Yankai Tan, a governor of Hunan province, Hunan Yuqun Association signed a contact with the Yale-China Association, which led to the founding of Xiangya Medical College, the first medical college based on international collaboration in China. Dr. Fuqing Yan, a significant figure in China’s history of western medicine, served as the first dean of Xiangya Medical College.

In 1915, the inauguration of a new building in Changsha marked the cooperation between Yali Hospital and Xiangya Medical College. This red building, integrating design features of the east and the west, exemplified the most modern hospital architecture in central south China at that time, and has remained a landmark of Changsha (Figure 1). In October 1915, the title “Yali Hospital” was changed to “Xiangya Hospital”. During its development, Xiangya Hospital has changed its name several times (Table 1) and has been supervised by numerous leaders (Table 2).

Figure 1 The red building of Xiangya Hospital was built in 1916.

Today, Xiangya Hospital (Figure 2) is a comprehensive tertiary hospital with direct supervision from the National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China, and it is affiliated with Central South University, a national key university in China. Xiangya Hospital, which employs more than 5,000 healthcare professionals and is equipped with state of the art technology, has developed into one of the top hospitals in China. It now has about 3,500 beds and 88 clinical departments and subspecialties.

Figure 2 Leadership Team of Xiangya Hospital in 2016.

Xiangya Hospital promotes the development of clinical specialities, maintains the project “Xiangya Distinguished Doctors”, and invests 150 to 200 million RMB annually in development and scientific technological innovation. In the past 4 years, 25 key national clinical research projects of Xiangya Hospital have been funded, ranking 5^th in China.

Xiangya hospital has two “National Distinguished Teachers” and four “National Excellent Resources Sharing Courses”. Xiangya students have won the special prize in the National Competition of Clinical Skills consecutively each year from 2012 to 2015. Further, Xiangya hospital successfully hosted the final of the 4th National Competition of Clinical Skills.

In the past 4 years, overall about 1,203 projects have been funded with about 270 million RMB, 252 of them are funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). A total of 2,718 papers have been published, with 1,213 of them published in the journals indexed in SCI. Xiangya Hospital has received 40 national and provincial awards for science and technology and 85 patents were granted.

As a public hospital, Xiangya Hospital is committed to its social responsibilities. To implement its goal of “providing Xiangya service beyond Xiangya perimeters”, a three-level rehabilitation medical service network was established and a new training model for the education of rural and community doctors. In the past four years, Xiangya Hospital has collaborated with 144 community health care providers and organizations, as well as expanded its tele-medicine coverage to 11 provinces connecting with 129 hospitals. In the past 2 years, 1,117 hospital administrators and 500 doctors in primary hospitals of Xinjiang Province, China, were trained by Xiangya Hospital. Since 2012, Xiangya Hospital has successively organized nine medical teams providing assistance in five special provinces. In 2014 and 2015, Xiangya Hospital organized the first medical team of Hunan and the fifth Chinese Medical team to assist Sierra Leone to fight against the Ebola.

During its 110 years’ history Xiangya Hospital has cultivated an outstanding group of distinguished healthcare professionals and medical scientists, including the Xiangya Overseas Alumni Association (Figure 3). Xiangya Hospital will continue to enhance its capabilities in medical care, medical education, scientific research and hospital administration, as well as strengthen its core competitiveness and innovative ability. A recent example is the establishment of Xiangya International Medical Center (XIMC) (Figure 4).

Figure 3 Alumni Present at the Celebration for 100^th Anniversary of Xiangya School of Medicine (XYSN) in Ellicott City, Maryland, US.

Figure 4 The opening of Xiangya International Medical Center (XIMC).

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Journal of Xiangya Medicine. The article did not undergo external peer review.

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