The University of Health Sciences (UHS) quest in modernising medical education was given a boost on Wednesday following its admission into the Hong Kong based International Database for Enhanced Assessments & Learning (Ideal) Consortium.
UHS became the first university in Pakistan to join the Ideal Consortium, which is a group of international medical schools from 12 countries committed to sharing assessment materials and enhancing the assessment of medical students.
The member medical schools of this consortium have pooled their item banks in order to have access, through the web, to a critical mass of questions suitable for assessing medical students. The pooled banks include selected and constructed response item formats designed for purposes of summative and formative assessment.
The consortium has, therefore, created two assessment banks - one that is restricted and frequently used for purposes of summative assessments and a second that is non-restricted and used for other purposes including formative assessments. Collectively, these banks are referred to as the International Database for Enhanced Assessments and Learning (Ideal).
The Ideal banks are web based databases that include questions with various assessment formats such as A-type, R-type, Multiple Response, OSCE, OPSE, Modified Essay Questions, etc. This database will now be available to the University of Health Sciences and its affiliated institutions including, Allama Iqbal Medical College Lahore, Nishter Medical College Multan, Punjab Medical College Faisalabad, Quaid-i-Azam Medical College Bahawalpur, Rawalpindi Medical College Rawalpindi, De` Montmorency College of Dentistry Lahore, Dental Section Nishter Medical College Multan, ACE Institute of Health Sciences Lahore, Institute of Public Health Lahore, Punjab Institute of Cardiology Lahore, Postgraduate Medical Institute Lahore, Armed Forces Postgraduate Medical Institute Rawalpindi and its provisionally affiliated institutions including Services Institute of Medical Sciences Lahore, School of Allied Health Sciences Lahore, Lahore Medical & Dental College, FMH College of Medicine and Dentistry Lahore, Wah Medical College and Margalla Institute of Health Sciences Rawalpindi.
The consortium which has representations from UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Pakistan, Bahrain, Oman and UAE recognised the valuable contributions the University of Health Sciences, Lahore will make to the database.
UHS Vice Chancellor Professor M.H. Mubbashar said that the membership of Ideal consortium would make the assessment process clean, efficient and standardised. The availability of this voluminous high quality assessment bank to the students as well as the faculty would promote research for developing international standards in assessment of medical competence in the country and provide an opportunity to communicate with international medical schools concerning quality standards in assessment. "It is a significant breakthrough in the development of a modern, global assessment process in medical education in Pakistan", he added.