Khyber Medical University Institute of Medical Sciences (KMU-IMS) Kohat on Wednesday organized Pakistan’s first design thinking training for MBBS students. The program aims to introduce students to design thinking as an approach to problem-solving through effective innovation in healthcare. Prof. Dr. Musarrat Jabeen Principal KIMS Kohat inaugurated the training and encouraged the students to make the most out of it. The lead trainer for the program was Fazali Subhan who is the head of BIC at Malakand University and an expert in design thinking and an internationally certified trainer. He has an MBA from the University of Liverpool, UK, and an MS from the University of Paris, France. He is an alumnus of the Australia Awards Short Course in Business Incubation Management at the University of Queensland, Australia, and has worked with various organizations and provided training in different countries on three continents.
Fazali Subhan has been contributing to the improvement of Pakistan’s startup and innovation ecosystem since 2012. It is clear that the design thinking approach to support healthcare innovation has been rapidly adopted in the Western world. In this regard, the University Of California San Francisco School Of Medicine has included design thinking in its curriculum since 2014. The school’s design thinking and clinical empathy course is included under the title of how to use design thinking to improve patient care. Another example is the University Of Pittsburgh School Of Medicine, which has incorporated design thinking into its curriculum since 2015. The school’s design thinking and communication course teach medical students how to improve patient communication.
It is noteworthy that Khyber Medical University is the first university in the country to introduce design thinking at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The university has already organized two highly successful customized design thinking workshops for students from various healthcare domains. It is worth mentioning that Prof. Dr. Zia ul Haq wants to make healthcare education at KMU and its affiliated institutions at par with the world’s top universities with more focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. The supervised design thinking training workshop is an important link in this series which was highly appreciated by the participants. The participants described the program as a refreshing experience and said that the training activities helped them step by step to increase their creative confidence.
