It was established in 2003 by an Act of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly for better management of the health and medical education-related courses.

[2] The main objective behind the establishment of the university was to raise the level of medical education across the state of West Bengal Before the establishment of the West Bengal University of Health Sciences (WBUHS), undergraduate and postgraduate level medical teaching in different state medical colleges of West Bengal was supervised by various state universities.

This caused a huge disparity between different state medical colleges of West Bengal in terms of teaching and learning process, nature and standards of the evaluation, and most significantly; the recognition of the graduates from the different universities.

[2] Finally, it became active on 1 January 2003; which is considered as the date of birth for this embodiment of higher education in the fields of medical sciences in the state.

The West Bengal University of Health Science is an affiliating university and has jurisdiction over all the medical, AYUSH, paramedical & allied health sciences, dental, nursing & pharmacy colleges of the entire state of West Bengal.Though some private med schools running under private university affiliation still it has 124 affiliated institutions under its umbrella as of now.[when?