DEPARTMENTS OVERVIEW

MEDICAL LABORATORY SCIENCES

The Medical Laboratory Sciences (MLS) Program at FHS-UOB offers a Bachelor of Science in Medical Laboratory (regular track and pre-med track), and a Master of Science in two fields of specialization: Molecular Biology, and Infectious Diseases & Immunology as well as a Professional Master degree in Laboratory Management.

The program is committed to educational excellence. The MLS program aims at educating and graduating highly skilled, multidiscipline, resourceful, competent, and ethical medical laboratory sciences professionals. The program gives students both an in-depth theoretical understanding of different subjects in Clinical Laboratory Sciences and hands-on laboratory experiences with the opportunity to explore conventional and new methods in the field. The MLS curriculum is continuously revised to meet the ever-changing and health care needs and to better serve the UOB mission. To this end, the curriculum is tailored to conform to the highest international standards instilling academic knowledge and professional skills in our students to be able to successfully perform the responsibilities of a distinguished clinical laboratory scientist or future physician. The Clinical training requirements of the program are done in collaboration with Saint George Hospital Medical University Center (SGHMUC) and Mont Liban Hospital (MLH) in addition to other Key hospitals in the country in the North and Alley.

The program graduated students with problem-solving abilities and research skills allowing them to land great career opportunities. The multidisciplinary facets of the program enable students to pursue higher education in different fields mainly in Clinical Laboratory Sciences. In addition, students have the chance as well to continue their higher education in the field of health services administration, epidemiology and public health. This is evidenced by the high number of students currently enrolled in the program (352), thus making the MLS department the largest among FHS departments.

The exceptionally high acceptance rate of the MLS students to medical schools (88%) is among the most significant achievement of the program. Students enrolled in the MLS benefit from the experience of the highly qualified faculty graduating from universities such as Creighton-USA, Cambridge -UK, Strathclyde-Glasgow, Marseille II-France, and Montpellier 2-France. Also, the MLS team was the pillar of the PCR lab that was established in April 2020 at Kurah “Balamand-Hayati project” that tracks and traces COVID 19 in Lebanon where they contributed positively to the whole procedure in the lab. Furthermore, the MLS team played a major role in the vaccination center at UOB with the involvement of faculty, undergraduate and graduate students.

Nadine El Hajj,
joined the MLS Program at UOB in 2017 as an
undergraduate student and is currently pursuing
Master’s degree in Molecular Biology.

Being passionate about the topics of healthcare, science, and medicine since a very young age, I needed a place that can help me elevate my knowledge by pursuing my higher education. The Medical Laboratory Sciences program at the University of Balamand was one of the few places that could offer interesting discourses and hands-on lab trainings.Beyond that, the Faculty of Health Sciences also gave me the opportunity to meet incredible mentors, lifetime friends, and curious colleagues that will never be forgotten.”

Georges Ghandour,
Graduate class of June 2020 – FOM.

Since I was a little kid, I always had the dream of becoming an exceptional surgeon and to make a change in the world. My parkour began as a Medical Laboratory Student at Balamand and I can say I could not have chosen a better BS for medical school. A big advantage of the program was the numerous clinical trainings in the hospital that provided a great amount of exposure to the medical field. Also, it taught me a large number of skills such as culturing bacteria, withdrawing blood at the blood bank, analyzing hematological slides, learning how to stain them and many more. These skills are crucial for future research as an important portion of medical researche requires such abilities. After being accepted in medical school, I realized how helpful my BS was because I already had knowledge of a big part of the information for example in immunology and microbiology.

I thank everyone for pushing me to start my career as a medical laboratory student and I highly advise all future medical students to do so. The program is fruitful and worth it.

Degrees

MLS REGULAR
TRACK

MLS PRE-MED TRACK

MS IN CLINICAL LABORATORY
SCIENCE-INFECTIOUS DISEASE
AND IMMUNOLOGY

MS IN CLINICAL LABORATORY SCIENCES- MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

PROFESSIONAL MASTER
DEGREE IN LABORATORY
MANAGEMENT