A unique one-year, fully funded fellowship to train professionals to ideate their own low-cost innovations for healthcare, biomedicine, and social innovation using the very valuable and relevant tools of human-centered design thinking, business management and entrepreneurship, public health and research, narrative medicine, leadership, and information technology.
Narrative Medicine
As described by Rita Charon, (Founder and Executive Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University) "The interaction between a health practitioner who doesn’t simply look at diseases but treats the person who’s suffering from an illness by listening closely to his story." Narrative Medicine employs creative narration to recognize, decipher, empathize with, and act to resolve the plights of others. Using narrative competency, physicians can truly join their patients in illness, reflect on their personal journeys through their clinical practice, appreciate their kinship with and duties towards other health care professionals, and practice compassionate care that prevents their burnout. You can read and contribute to our narrative medicine blogs here: Hikaye.
Gaming League
Giving creativity and innovation a new twist, our virtual Gaming League gives a much-needed break to the students, faculty, and staff of the Aga University campuses from across the globe. Using a multidisciplinary, trans-generational, and non-hierarchical approach to promote team building and mental health care, the gaming league consists of various activities ranging from outdoor sports to board/video games. Our recent engagement has been with AKU East Africa, and we continue to look ahead to more exciting collaborations.
Hackathons
Hackathons serve as the perfect platform for people from all walks of life - with or without a medical background - to put their heads together to solve existing healthcare problems by generating new ideas and evolving them into innovations with business models. Since 2016, CCIT has conducted a total of nine Hackathons within AKU, themed around emergency medicine, pediatrics, medical education, research and student experience, global surgery, school preparedness for emergencies, COVID-19, and student mental health. Our most recent Hackathon was a virtual, multi-day event held in collaboration with the Brain and Mind Institute (BMI) and the Student Affairs and Services of the Aga Khan University, bringing together AKU students, trainees, and medical residents from Africa, Asia, and Europe, with selected participants from other universities and partners from around the world.
OTBT (Off The Beaten Track)
An elective course for the medical students at AKU, “Off The Beaten Track" is an effort to inculcate and promote innovation in our medical curriculum to pave way for diversity in the healthcare arena and raise a more skilled generation of healthcare professionals. The OTBT includes two streams: “Creative Innovation Through Human Centricity" & “Entrepreneurial Innovation through Health Startups".
NHIP
The National Health Incubator was a joint
initiative of Accelerate Prosperity (AP) and the Aga Khan University (AKU)
which aimed to catalyze commercialization, growth, and adoption of new
technology, innovation, and services that are being produced by entrepreneurs
in the health and related sectors in Pakistan. NHI has provided customized
business advisory and investments to select ideas, startups, early-stage, and
established businesses across the country which are looking to introduce,
deploy and/or adopt a product or a service that promotes innovation and/or
technology in the provision of health services nationwide. The businesses also
had an opportunity to leverage AP’s investments to unlock further investments
from the private sector and institutional investors connected to AP or
independently.
Innov'D Board
Our subject-matter experts have curated a series of tools and short courses/workshops to systematically benchmark and enhance innovation at an individual and organizational level.
Webinar
Moderated by the Director of CCIT, Dr. Asad I. Mian, the MEDJACK webinar series turns over each chapter of AKU’s first-ever e-book, MEDJACK, as the co-authors of the book, its innovation champions, and other innovators and entrepreneurs get into thought-provoking conversations with snippets from their personal journeys. The webinar explores the ICE (innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship) potential in healthcare and beyond, getting the like-minded together and helping others see the scope where there was none. With power-houses like the former President of AKU, Mr. Firoz Rasul; Carl Amrhein, Provost and Vice President, Academic, Aga Khan University; Lorne A. Babiuk, Former Vice President, Research, University of Alberta; Prof. Dr. Ather Enam, Department of Surgery, AKU; and a list of many more, the webinar series is catalyzing the conversion of ideologies into practical and sustainable innovative ventures in the lower-middle-income countries.
Journal Club
Our journal club is a fortnightly virtual session where we invite our team members and those interested (from within and outside of AKU) to present recent research papers on the theme of innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship in lower-middle-income countries, followed by a Q&A session. If you have authored or studied a research article on the above-mentioned theme, we encourage you to share it with us and be a part of our journal club. You may reach out to us at ccit@aku.edu
The Incubation Programme
After conducting three Hackathons, the need for AKU to have its incubation hub became evident – a place where the innovations brought forth could be better aligned with the problems they promised to solve. This is precisely the function of our incubation program, a first of its kind at AKU. Since its inception in March 2018, we have nurtured both student-led and student-centric innovations at AKU. To date, more than fifteen incubatees have been taken through a formal process of incubation, with a few securing early-stage seed funding. Through channeling student creativity, we hope to develop entrepreneurial and innovative solutions with far-reaching benefits across AKU campuses and, thus, empowering the national healthcare/biomedical ecosystem.
Some of our incubatees include:
PFIN
The Pain-Free Invisible Needle (PFIN) is a cheap, yet, effective way to curb trypanophobia. This innovation consists of cardboard, worn as a sleeve with holographic stickers, to divert the child's attention and hide the needle. Meanwhile, a local anesthetic sprayed on the site of injection numbs the surface to make it 'pain-free'. PFIN has undergone laboratory dummy arm trials and is currently in the clinical trial phase. For more information please contact ibisajid@gmail.com.
ResQvent
Respiratory distress is a severe medical condition caused by various pathologies like asthma, pneumonia, and congestive heart failure, to name a few. Currently, two universal devices exist to assist with mechanical ventilation. ResQvent was designed as an automated, reliable, and long-lasting attachment to fit onto a standard AMBU bag and automate compression and air supply. The device is cost-effective and can last long enough to act as a potential temporary ventilator replacement, thereby, potentially saving lives that are lost due to a lack of efficient resources and manpower. For more information please contact
areeba.shakeel@aku.edu.
Maseeha health
Maseeha Health is a telehealth platform aiming to improve post-operative recovery by connecting patients and their families with their surgical teams to prevent and manage post-op complications. For more information please contact aiman.younus1@gmail.com
