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Osaka Medical College is located in the commuter town of Takatsuki, between the major centres of Osaka and Kyoto.

It was founded in 1927 as Osaka Senior Higher School of Medicine and attained university status under its current name in 1946. It was founded with the intention of training doctors for expatriate Japanese populations in China and Brazil and retains a school song with references to the Gobi Desert and the Amazon.

Its founding mission was that "the mission of medical training is medical education and medical research, which is accomplished when applied to actual medical practice", translated nowadays to "benevolent art with a sincere attitude".

Its aspiration today to be "one of the world¡¯s pre-eminent medical universities" has led to intellectual and physical reconstruction, with a major curriculum reform in 2017 and plans for major rebuilding at Osaka Medical College Hospital. This 882 bed facility, founded in 1930, was designated as an Advanced Treatment Hospital in 1994 and is the Osaka Perinatal Centre for Mother and Child.

Entry is highly competitive, with 2,900 applications for 112 medical places and 1,300 for 86 on the nursing course in 2018. Women accounted for around 30 per cent of the 683 medical students, and all but nine of the 351 trainee nurses.

The university has become known among specialists in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) for the OMC brace used in treatment of the disease. In 2018 the university set up the Kansai BNCT medical centre for a revolutionary cancer treatment using boron. It is a partner with Takatsuki City in creating the Takatsuki Model for "extending healthy life spans by unifying industry, government and academia".