K. S. Hegde Medical Academy (KSHEMA) is considered to be one of the top class medical institutions in South India and the academy is situated at Deralakatte in the city of Mangalore, Karnataka. The academy is actually a unit of the Nitte Education Trust that is a registered linguistic minority charitable Trust. The Trust is aimed at empowering people through quality education and training. The former Justice of the Supreme Court of India and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Late K. S. Hegde founded the trust in 1979 and it is inspired by the values of freedom of expression, respect for fundamental rights and probity and integrity, embodied by Justice Hegde. The Medical Academy, managed by the Trust, has been named after Late Justice K. S. Hegde. The motto of the K. S. Hegde Medical Academy is "Long Life Ahead".
The Medical Council of India (MCI) and the Government of Karnataka have recognised the K. S. Hegde Medical Academy, and the academy is affiliated to the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS), Bangaluru. The college started its academic operations in the years of 1999-2000 and it is admitting a number of 100 students, every year, since then. Apart from the college, the K. S. Hegde Medical Academy also runs a full fledged 400 bed Hospital, named the Justice K. S. Hegde Charitable Hospital. The hospital is attached to the college and it offers state-of-the-art facilities in the departments like General Medicine, Paediatrics, Dermatology, General Surgery, Orthopaedics, ENT, Ophthalmology, Obstetrics & Gynaecology and Departments of Radiology and Anaesthesiology. The hospital also offers some super-speciality facilities in the areas like Nuclear Medicine, Cardiology, Neurology, Neurosurgery, Cardiothoracic Surgery, Paediatric Surgery, Urology, Nephrology, Plastic Surgery, Gastroenterology and Oncology. These facilities are a part of the health-care programme of the Justice K. S. Hegde Charitable Hospital and the K. S. Hegde Medical Academy.

There are a large number of departments in the K. S. Hegde Medical Academy (KSHEMA) and the departments include Anesthesiology, Anatomy, Biochemistry, Community Medicine, Dermatology, Otorhinolaryngology, Forensic Medicine, General Medicine, General Surgery, Microbiology, Neuroscience, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Ophthalmology, Orthopedics, Pediatrics, Pathology, Pharmacology, Physiology, Psychiatry, Radio diagnosis & Imaging, and TB, Chest and Respiratory Diseases. The academy offers various courses at the undergraduate and post-graduate level and the courses are MBBS, M.D. in Anesthesiology, General Medicine, Obstetrics and gynaecology, Pathology, Pediatrics and Radiology. Apart from that, the academy also offers courses like M.S. in General Surgery, Ophthalmology, Orthopedics and Otolaryngology.

The K. S. Hegde Medical Academy (KSHEMA) has collaborations with a number of international medical institutions. The institutions include the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, U.S.A. The collaboration between KSHEMA and the University of Texas Health Sciences Center is made for co-operation in research in diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. The KSHEMA has also established a state-of-the-art regional research centre on communicable diseases in collaboration with the University of Texas Health Sciences, on the campus. The Institute has a staff exchange and training programme with Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, USA, as well. With the help of this programme, the students of KSHEMA will have the opportunity to have up-to-date training with valuable clinical material, guided by renowned teachers and researchers.