Established in 1951, Southern Medical University (SMU), a national key university (1979), was originally the First Military Medical University, PLA. In August 2004, it was handed over to the local government of Guangdong Province and renamed as Southern Medical University. It is the only Provincial Prospective High-Level Medical Universities and the first Ministry-Province Co-constructed Medical University. SMU is one of the first 8 prestigious universities to run the pilot 8-year medical education program. It is also the first universities to pilot the program of education and cultivation of outstanding doctors in China.

SMU comprises 21 teaching institutions and currently has a total of 24,924 full-time students, including 9,522 postgraduates, 14,140 undergraduates, and near 1,000 international students. SMU has 15 affiliated hospitals, among them, there are 11 Grade 3, Class A hospitals, with a combined total of over 22,000 beds. The annual patient volume reaches approximately 22 million cases.

SMU has doctoral and master's degree authorization qualifications in all medical disciplines, and 10 postdoctoral research mobile stations. It has 23 national-level first-class undergraduate professional construction points, leading the number of independent medical universities in China. SMU has formed a multidisciplinary system with Medicine as the mainstream, Science, Engineering, Law, Management and Education developing in a coordinated manner. Its 14 academic disciplines including Clinical Medicine, Pharmacology and Toxicology, Molecular Biology and Genetics, Biology and Biochemistry, Neuroscience and Behavioristics, Immunology, Chemistry, Materials Science, Microbiology, Social Science, Agricultural

Science, Environmental and Ecology, Psychiatry/Psychology and Engineering Science were listed by ESI (Essential Science Indicators) as the world's top 1%, among which Clinical Medicine was listed as the world's top 0.5 ‰, Pharmacology and Toxicology was listed as the world's top 1‰. In 2024 THE (Times Higher Education) World University Rankings, SMU ranked 351-400th globally and 1st among independent medical

universities in China.

In 2005, the University began to enroll international undergraduates majoring in MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, programs delivered in English), and started to enroll international students who receive Chinese Government Scholarship in 2006. At the end of 2023, SMU has cultivated more than 2,900 international students from 114 different countries. Besides, SMU is one of the ten educational foreign aid bases designated by the Ministry of Education of China, and the key backbone unit of foreign aid training designated by the Ministry of Commerce of China. It has trained 3,329 medical and health officials and technicians from 125 countries.