Universities need to shift from traditional research models and move towards innovation and entrepreneurship, Higher Education Commission (HEC) Acting Chairman Syed Imtiaz Hussain Gilani said on Saturday.
Gilani was speaking at the inaugural ceremony of a three-day international conference on medical education ‘AEME 2014’ at the University of Health Sciences (UHS).
“The poor suffer most from ill health. Much of this suffering could be prevented through existing treatments. It could be prevented by applying the latest knowledge and research about what works”, he said.
UHS Vice Chancellor Maj Gen (r) Muhammad Aslam said medical education needed to evolve alongside patient care. “Medical education is an on-going process which must adapt to the profession’s changing dynamics with respect to technology, patient needs, and service-delivery”, he said.
He said he hoped the conference would help health professionals develop new approaches in response to advances in medicine, changes in healthcare delivery and patient demands. This would affect curriculum planning, teaching and learning methods, assessment techniques and educational management.
Aslam said the UHS was playing a vital role in generating an educational paradigm to modernise medical and health sciences curricula to bring them at par with international standards.
A dedicated department of medical education contributes to the capacity building of medical teachers, and runs the master’s programme for health professional’s education and a certificate course in medical teaching, said Aslam.
The vice chancellor also read the UN secretary general’s message in relation to the International Women Day on Saturday (March 8).
Isra University Vice Chancellor Ghulam Qadir Qazi urged medical institutions to allocate a bigger portion of their resources to research.
“The pyramid of medical knowledge that we see today has been erected, brick by brick, through our peers’ research in medical education”, he said. He said health professionals today needed to harness the potential of information technology to advance medical education.
Isra University Pro-Vice Chancellor Umar Ali Khan said during the course of the conference there would be 58 poster presentations, 87 paper presentations, nine lectures and 12 conference workshops.
University of Illinois Associate Dean Ara Tekien also spoke.
The Association for Excellence in Medical Education (AEME) Conference is being organised through a public-private partnership. Teaching and medical institutions collaborating for the event include the UHS, Isra University Islamabad, King Edward Medical University, Allama Iqbal Medical College, Fatima Jinnah Medical College, College of Physician and Surgeons Pakistan, Services Institute of Medical Sciences, Lahore, the CMH Medical College Lahore and the Lahore Medical and Dental College.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 9th, 2014.