The goal of the programme is to introduce students to design thinking as a problem-solving approach through effective healthcare innovation.
The Khyber Medical University Institute of Medical Sciences (KMU-IMS) in Kohat hosted Pakistan’s first design thinking training for medical students on Wednesday.
The goal of the programme is to introduce students to design thinking as a problem-solving approach through effective healthcare innovation. The training was inaugurated by Prof. Dr. Musarrat Jabeen, Principal of KIMS Kohat, who encouraged students to make the most of it.
Fazali Subhan, the director of the BIC at Malakand University, is a design thinking expert and internationally certified trainer.He holds an MBA from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom and an MS from the University of Paris in France.
He is a graduate of the Australia Awards Short Course in Business Incubation Management at the University of Queensland in Australia, and he has worked with various organisations and provided training in three continents.
Since 2012, Fazali Subhan has been working to improve Pakistan’s startup and innovation ecosystem.
The design thinking approach to supporting healthcare innovation has clearly been widely adopted in the Western world. Since 2014, the University Of California San Francisco School Of Medicine has included design thinking as part of its curriculum.
Under the heading of how to use design thinking to improve patient care, the school’s design thinking and clinical empathy course is included. Another case in point is the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, which has included design thinking in its curriculum since 2015. The design thinking and communication course at the school teaches medical students how to improve patient communication.
It is worth noting that Khyber Medical University is the country’s first university to teach design thinking at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Already, the university has held two highly successful customised design thinking workshops for students from various healthcare domains.
Prof. Dr. Zia ul Haq wishes to bring healthcare education at KMU and its affiliated institutions up to par with that of the world’s top universities, with a greater emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship.
The supervised design thinking training workshop is an important link in this series that the participants highly valued. The participants described the programme as a refreshing experience, with the training activities assisting them in gradually increasing their creative confidence.