Our Philosophy
MedoPolo: About us. The name Med’oPolo derives from the historical figure of Marco Polo – a famous Italian trader and explorer, who was based in Venice. Marco Polo is believed to have lived from 1254 until 1324 and played a central role in introducing Central Asia and China to mideval Europeans through his detailed travel accounts – named ‘Il Milione’. In his book, he describes his 24 year long journey along the ‘Silk Road’ from Venice to many parts of China from 1271 to 1295. He was the very first traveller to Asia, who left a detailed chronicle of his journey and a quite detailed description of the cultures and inner workings of the eastern world. His manuscript inspired later explorers, as for example Christopher Columbus and had a large influence on European cartography throughout mideval times. Ultimately, Marco Polo’s writings built the basis for the European exploration voyages of later centuries.
In analogy to the historical significance of Marco Polo, the dedicated team of Med’oPolo strives, since its very first foundation within the Shanghai East Hospital Education Office in 2010, for the national and international exchange of knowledge, culture, and everyday life-experiences between medical professionals worldwide. Our programs are completely independent of existing university affiliations, since the existence of university links do pose a major limitation to student mobility in international medical education. Besides the conveyance of pure medical knowledge, we also focus on bringing local culture and the local way-of-life across to our international students and promote mutual understanding and intercultural team working.
Med’oPolo firmly believes, that personal international contact between medical professionals will form the very foundations to highly capable cross-border cooperations and collaborations in the future – which are an important necessity to the medical field in an increasingly globalized world. Up to today, we count more than 600 alumni students of our programs, who have gained a deeper understanding of the working practice abroad and – to a large extend – still are in contact with the medical staff abroad.
MedoPolo: About us
What we do:
We have specialized in organizing, consulting, and sustaining international clinical rotations for medical students worldwide, while emphasizing a continuous and uniform quality of teaching and infrastructure of our partnering universities and hospitals. In addition, we are constantly working on strengthening existing ties of the Med’oPolo network and on actively search for new suitable and affordable international partnering programs and university partners in regions which are not easily accessible for international medical students.
In contrast to most other companies in this field, which often limit themselves to only mediation to earn money, it is at the very core of our philosophy to not only set up, monitor and shape the curricula of our international clinical rotation programs, but also to maintain all programs on a self-funding basis and very student friendly pricing structure. In our view, the decision to go abroad for a clinical rotation should not primarily be dependent only on ones wealth, but rather on the strong wish for experiencing foreign culture and gaining medical knowledge. Those opportunities should be open to every seriously interested medical student.
MedoPolo: About us – Our Team:
The entire spread around the globe Med’oPolo team is working on a non-profit basis and continually tries to pass this enthusiasm for advancing International Medical Education on to existing local structures and staff. While nurturing the initial spark in the institutions interest to get exposed to international medical students, we continuously identify the best tutors, who have sufficiant language proficiency as well as a high intrinsic motivation to pass their clinical knowledge along to foreign students. In addition, we nurture the contact between medical students by placing our international students with local medical students to ensure a mutual benefit for all.
“I have not told half of what I’ve seen, because no one would have believed me”
Marco Polo, Venetian merchant and discoverer (1254 – 1324)