The task group on the city's new medical school is looking at the financial aspects of the proposals submitted by the three universities before making the final recommendation to the chief executive by the end of the year.

That's according to Health Secretary Lo Chung-mau, who told RTHK on Friday that the group had already reviewed the proposals submitted by Baptist University, Polytechnic University and University of Science and Technology and that two rounds of meetings had been held with representatives from each of the institutions separately.

He said the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau is now looking at the financial sustainability and cost effectiveness of their proposals.

"The three proposals, I would say, are very different, different not only in the curriculum design and the staff recruitment, student recruitment, etc, but also in terms of the capital requirement as well as the financial proposal, financial aspect of the model," Lo said.

"Some of these, the financial implication, is rather low, but on the other hand, there is a proposal which is much more costly.

"So we have to look at the details before we would make the final recommendation to the chief executive."

He said the group has high expectations of the third medical school, as the SAR's high healthcare standards are correlated with the existing medical schools, which are ranked in the top 25 globally, at Chinese University and the University of Hong Kong.

Therefore, Lo said, the positioning of the new school will be guided based on the existing ones.

While he hopes the new school will develop in a way that complements the other two, Lo emphasised that all three would have to adopt the same high standards in their cultivation of medical professionals.