TRUONG DAI HOC Y DUOC TP.HCM

Their core work

The University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City is one of Vietnam's leading medical and pharmaceutical institutions, training clinicians and conducting applied health research in Southeast Asia's largest urban centre. In H2020, they contributed clinical expertise and access to patient populations in Vietnam to international public health and biomedical consortia. Their documented work covers respiratory disease management, smoking cessation, household air pollution exposure, and the biomedical evaluation of natural plant compounds. They function as a regional clinical partner — offering what European research teams cannot easily replicate: real-world access to high-burden disease populations in a rapidly urbanising Southeast Asian context.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both projects began within a single year (2015–2016) and ran through 2019, so the participation window is narrow and does not show a long arc of change. The available keyword data comes entirely from FRESH AIR and centres on respiratory disease, tobacco, and household air quality — a public health-oriented cluster consistent with the disease burden priorities of Vietnam's urban health system. The MediHealth involvement hints at a parallel or emerging interest in pharmaceutical and nutraceutical research, but no keyword data supports a clear shift in direction. With only two projects, it is not possible to draw reliable conclusions about strategic evolution — the profile reflects a snapshot rather than a trend.

The two projects suggest a medical university that brings clinical and pharmaceutical breadth — respiratory public health on one side, plant-based biomedical research on the other — but the H2020 record is too limited to identify a reliable direction for future collaboration.

How they like to work

This organisation has never coordinated an H2020 project, joining exclusively as participant or third-party partner. The 26 unique consortium partners across 15 countries indicate they participate in large, multinational research consortia rather than tight bilateral arrangements. This pattern is typical of institutions that are recruited for their geographic and clinical access rather than for project management capacity — they are brought in to provide data, patients, or field expertise that anchors the European consortium in a non-EU context.

Their two projects generated connections with 26 distinct partners spread across 15 countries, a notably broad network for an organisation with only two EU-funded projects. The reach is global by necessity: a Vietnamese university joining European health and pharmacy consortia will always work across multiple continents.

What sets them apart

This is one of the very few Vietnamese academic medical institutions with direct H2020 participation on record, which makes it an unusual and potentially valuable partner for consortia that need a Southeast Asian clinical or public health anchor. Vietnam's high burden of respiratory disease, tobacco use, and indoor air pollution makes this university's patient populations and clinical infrastructure directly relevant to global health research questions that European institutions cannot address alone. For any future Horizon Europe proposal touching low- and middle-income country health outcomes, primary care delivery, or traditional medicine bioactives, this university offers access that is difficult to replicate through European partners.

Highlights from their portfolio

• FRESH AIR
  The only funded project in their H2020 record and their most substantive contribution — a RIA on tobacco-related lung disease and primary care integration that brought EUR 164,875 to a Vietnamese institution operating outside the EU funding system.
• MediHealth
  An MSCA-RISE project on natural compounds for healthy ageing that illustrates the university's pharmacy research dimension and its role as a non-European source of ethnobotanical and plant-bioactive knowledge.