Year 2019 was historically prominent for I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University, because on April 17, 2019, according to the Decree of the President of Ukraine No. 146/2019, the University was awarded the status of national university. This status is a great merit of all the university staff. At the same time, it is a great responsibility and a real encouragement for further development, even better and more fruitful affairs in both education and research. During the year reported, the university sought after new approaches in organization of the work of all departments for effective research, innovation, international cooperation, admission campaigns, ensuring a proper quality of the learning process, treatment, prevention, social, economic and financial affairs.

TNMU has won a number of international competitions, grants and programmes. In 2020, the University won the Erasmus+ project “Building an Academic Capacity in Global Health in Eastern Europe – Central Asia Region” (BACE) according to the results of a competition announced by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission. The project was aimed at development or modernization of academic programs in health care and environment, innovation of the governance of higher education institutions and assistance in relationships development with the higher education institutions of Ukraine and other countries as well as improvement of economic and social environment. In 2020 the University won the project “Simulation in Undergraduate MEDical Education for Improvement of SAFEty and Quality of Patient Care (SAFEMED+)” within the Erasmus+ programme KA2 “Capacity Building in the Field of Higher Education – Joint Projects”. This project involved development of academic programs through preparation of innovative courses and methods and financial assistance for modernization of the simulation centre of the university. Under the Instrumental Access Programme grant in August 2020, the University received a large amount of recent laboratory equipment from the non-profit organization “Seeding Labs”, Boston, United States.

The project “Implementation of the model of combining physicians training and public vigilance with the diagnosis of primary immunodeficiencies in children of Ternopil region” has been implemented under the management of Professor Oksana Boiarchuk, the Head of the Department of Children’s Diseases and Paediatric Surgery, owing to the grant of the Jeffrey Modell Foundation. The projects of the UIS Poland-Belarus-Ukraine Cross-Border Cooperation Program 2014-2020 have been implemented in the University as well: “Joint actions aimed at reducing the incidence of tuberculosis and equalizing access to health care in the poorest and most marginalized communities of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine” and “Lifestyle of different occupational groups and civilization threats to health in the border region PL-BY-UA”; a joint project with the University of Miskolc (Hungary) – EurECAS (European Evaluation of Comportment and Addiction among Students) project. In October 2019, I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University became a member of the Association for Regional Cooperation in Health, Science and Technology (RECOOP HST Association). The Consortium for Regional Cooperation in Health, Science and Technology (RECOOP HST) was established in 2006 by Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre (CSMC), Los Angeles, USA, together with eleven institutes and universities from six Central and Eastern European countries (CEE). In 2012, the CSMC established the Regional Cooperation Association for Health, Science and Technology (RECOOP HST Association) on the basis of the consortium.

TNMU carries on studying epidemiology, clinical features and prevention of Lyme disease among the population of different regions of Ukraine. Clinical and laboratory studies are conducted to determine the prevalence and morbidity among forestry workers and the population, which is part of the joint Ukrainian-Polish project “Study of epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical features and prevention of borreliosis” within research projects of the European Union. Cooperation with IGeneX Inc. and ID-FISH Technology (Palo Alto, USA) laboratories, a laboratory of the Institute of Rural Medicine in Lublin, Poland, also continues, as well as a joint study of Lyme disease and other transmissible infections (anaplasmosis and babesiosis) in mites taken from the environment in Ternopil region. I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University is leading in the rankings of “4 International Colleges & Universities” (https://www.4icu.org/ua/), Webometrics ranking of the world’s universities.

I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University is a powerful scientific institution, which has implemented training of scientific personnel through master’s, clinical residency, post-graduate and doctoral studies. In recent years, there has been a positive trend in defence of dissertations.

Currently, the university involves 683 teachers (without part-time employees), 90% of them having a scientific degree: 112 doctors of science (16%) and 500 PhDs (73%). Among academic and teaching staff, 94 people have the academic title of Professor (14%), 353 – the academic title of Associate Professor (52%). 38 employees of the university are members of scientific and methodological commissions, coordination councils and expert commissions of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.

Three Specialized Academic Boards are significant for training of academic staff at the university regarding defending PhD and doctoral theses in 10 specialties: Surgery, Normal Anatomy (Medicine), Normal Anatomy (Biology), Pathological Physiology; Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Biochemistry (Medicine and Biology).

Certified Research Laboratories are the basis for research and preparation of theses: Central Research Laboratory, Interdepartmental Training and Research Laboratory, Laboratory of Microbiological and Parasitological Studies, Laboratory of Psychophysiological Studies, Training and Research Laboratory of Pharmacological Research. All measuring instruments used in these laboratories are metrologically controlled and certified. All laboratories have confirmed their status and received certification.

Ukrmedknyha Publishing House publishes 14 national scientific medical journals quarterly; 12 of them are recommended as professional publications. All publications received an international citation index DOI. The journals are included in the Crossref and Google Scholar scientometric databases. Most journals are indexed by the international scientometric databases: Index Copernicus, Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, JournalTOCs, ROAD, DOAJ, BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine). The University is persistently working on joining the journals into other international scientometric databases. The English-language International Journal of Medicine and Medical Research is being published at the University as well.