Aga Khan University’s Vice- Chancellor Prince Aga Karim Khan recently inaugurated the Centre for Innovation in Medical Education (CIME), a state-of-the-art facility at the Aga Khan University, for technology-based learning for health professionals.

CIME’s mission is to transform the education of health professionals through the use of simulation and virtual reality technology to develop knowledge and skills before treating patients.

The centre offers multi-purpose teaching spaces, high-fidelity simulators, and speciality environments such as the phantom-head dental lab, a cardiac catheterisation lab and telemedicine clinics.

The 80,000-square foot and Rs 1.6 billion ($15 million) donor-funded centre consists of three buildings – the Mariyam Bashir Dawood Building, the Ibn Sina Building and the Shiraz Boghani Building.

Students and professionals from different disciplines work together on real-life patient simulations. Nurses and doctors can practice responding to a situation in which a patient stops breathing, using a high-tech mannequin that responds as a real patient would respond. Afterwards, they can watch a video of themselves and analyse their performance.

The centre aims to raise the bar for teaching and learning and to thereby deliver higher standards of practice across the professions of medicine, nursing and allied health.