Pioneering Collaboration Pushes Frontiers of Pakistan's Healthcare by Saniya Zaidi (guest writer)

Earlier this year an unanticipated event occurred. The event was coined “To Innovation and Beyond” and was hosted at Aga Khan University. This unprecedented collaboration between Aga Khan University and Habib University brought together students of Science and Engineering with Students of Medical Sciences. The event essentially saw problems identified by the Final Year Science and Engineering students of Habib University that needed medical expertise to move forward. These problems mostly began as classroom projects, where the students aimed to solve real-world healthcare problems but lacked the knowledge that the students and practitioners of medical science could offer.

An event of this magnitude did not just come about overnight. There was a devoted core team behind the effort. From Habib University this dedication was led by Dr. Waqar Saleem, Dr. Saleha Raza, and Mr. Jawwad Farid. The enthusiastic team from AKU consisted of three faculty members Drs. Asad Mian, Saniya Sabzwari and Kulsoom Ghias, alongside the university’s Critical Creative Innovative Thinking (CCIT) forum.

The event started with a formal introduction of the teams and their projects. Habib University brought in 8 teams while AKU had 2 teams of its own. The audience consisted of the teams, mentors, AKU students and doctors who could choose to assist a project of their liking. The first team to present was the winner of the Hackathon 2018 at AKU. Each presentation was followed by questions from the audience. The questions mainly consisted of the scope of the project and what were the expectations associated with each project.

The projects covered a wide variety of problems and solutions, such as, improving breast cancer diagnosis using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning platforms, bettering mental health using a simple, interactive App, reducing disability after limb trauma by building an exoskeleton, and increasing awareness of rare diseases by creating an online repository for such disorders.

The event proved to be a bi-directional learning experience. Students were able to bridge the knowledge gap that previously existed in their ideas. They became more motivated to pursue their ideas as they now had an expert’s opinion to back it up. Furthermore, there was a breeze of confidence felt among the students as they had for the first time presented their ideas not for getting good grades but for the greater good of the community.

The faculty/ mentors were also able to take advantage of the learning experiences and sought new, fresh and unprecedented ways in which problems could be solved. Some of these methods provided fresh insights into a different class of solutions to the very same problems which they had extensively seen during their span of study/career.

The event ended with closing remarks by Dr. Mian who thanked the audience and the teams for their wholehearted participation. He also mentioned that he would like all the projects to prosper, and he wished for more collaborative efforts between the two universities.

[from Health & Disease]

About the Author: Saniya Zaidi is a Final Year student at the Habib University.

Editorial Note: Copyright belongs to the author.