On May 2nd, 2023, the Harvard China Health Partnership invited Zhi Min Sim to discuss ongoing developments of academic medicine in the context of China’s healthcare system and reform. Zhi Min is the Director of Partnerships and Strategy at Tsinghua Medicine — Tsinghua University’s newly formed academic medical center overseeing five Tsinghua constituent schools and three affiliated hospitals. He reflected upon the lessons learned in his role and what challenges lie ahead.
Zhi Min Sim started his career designing drones and robots for commercial and military applications before co-founding the Singapore technology company, Yonah, a drone logistics company that worked on improving public health outcomes in infrastructure-poor territories, such as Papua New Guinea. Last year, he earned a Master’s in Management Science and Global Affairs as a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University. In his current role, Zhi Min works closely with the founding chancellor of health sciences at Tsinghua University, Professor Wong Tien Yin, to build the future of academic medicine in China. Zhi Min is also an adjunct lecturer at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and holds a B.Eng and M.Eng from NUS in Mechanical Engineering.
