The Scientific Areas are the School's organizational subunits, equivalent to the departments foreseen in the Statutes of the University of Minho, which constitute the basic cells of scientific-pedagogical organization and management of resources within each consolidated area of knowledge.

The School of Medicine has four Scientific Areas, which are statutorily acknowledged: Fundamental Sciences in Medicine, Clinical Sciences, Humanities in Medicine, Health Systems Sciences and Interdisciplinary Development in Medicine. The duties of the Scientific Areas are to coordinate the curricular development and delivery in the corresponding areas, and assure the implementation of the adequate educational strategies and methods. The Scientific Areas agglutinate and articulate the curricular areas of the Medical Curriculum promoting the articulation between them, thus guaranteeing the overall coherence of the curriculum, paying attention to and eliminating omissions or repetitions.

The present Scientific Areas Coordinators are: Jorge Pedrosa for Fundamental Sciences in Medicine, Cristina Nogueira-Silva for Clinical Sciences, João Bessa for Humanities in Medicine, José Miguel Pêgo for Health Systems Sciences and Joana Palha for Interdisciplinary Development in Medicine;

The School of Medicine Research Subunit: the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS)

The ICVS is the research centre incorporated in the School, a subunit according to the School of Medicine Statutes, in which the scientific and technological development activities of the School are developed. The ICVS has its own governing bodies, according to the rules for research units integrated in the national system of Science and Technology, namely the Director (presently, Patrícia Maciel), the Scientific Council, presided by the Director, which integrates all the PhD members of ICVS and the External Advisory Committee.