Shaping tomorrow's
leaders

International Medical University celebrates 30 years of dedication in nurturing the medical and healthcare professionals of the future

By Calyn Yap

Recent years have undoubtedly demonstrated the vital role played by the healthcare profession to champion public health worldwide.

Medical and healthcare practitioners tirelessly strive to fulfill a noble calling in not only saving the lives of the people, but also moving into proactive action with preventive care, as well as the treatment and management of health conditions.

For International Medical University (IMU), this worthy journey started three decades ago. Its roots trace back to 1990, when a visionary Dr Kamal Salih and Dr Mei Ling Young, a social scientist with a strong interest in development, realised there was an acute shortage of doctors in Malaysia.

The problem was, universities were not producing enough medical practitioners, while studying medicine overseas was costly and beyond the means of many eligible students.

They came up with a brilliant solution:

If Malaysian students could not go out to get the medical training they qualified for, it would be brought to them.

Daring to dream

Enlisting the help of Universiti Sains Malaysia's Dr Saidi Hashim and Prof Ong Kok Hai, as well as leading medical educationists Prof Ron Harden and Prof Ian Hart, the six brought together their diverse expertise to brainstorm a unique education model.

Medical students would spend their first five semesters studying in Malaysia and then move to a leading institution of higher learning overseas to complete their medical studies.

Their joint dream materialised in 1992 in the form of the International Medical College (IMC), with five distinguished international universities embracing the radical concept to come onboard as Partner Medical Schools (PMS).

Thus IMC – officially launched on April 13, 1992 by then Education Minister Datuk Amar Dr Sulaiman Haji Daud –became Malaysia’s first private medical college to introduce the world’s first programme that allows medical students to transfer their credits to a PMS.

This year, IMU celebrates its 30th anniversary as a recognised integrated medical and health sciences institution, offering education, healthcare and research in partnership with some of the world's most respected individuals and institutions.

Medicine

Chiropractic

Chinese Medicine

Pharmacy

Dentistry

Dietetics and Nutrition

Over the years, IMU has been responsible for providing comprehensive and niche medical and health sciences education, including studies in complementary and alternative medicine.

This has led to producing quality medical professionals in the fields of Pharmacy, Nursing, Dentistry, Chiropractic, Chinese Medicine, Nutrition and Dietetics and Psychology, as well as non-clinical health programmes such as Medical Biotechnology, Biomedical Science and Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

As with any good university, this is complemented by strong research activities. IMU in 2012 established the Institute for Research, Development and Innovation (IRDI) to grow its research potential capacity.

Through its various Centres of Excellence (COE), IRDI provides focused exploration in five key areas: bioactive molecules and drug discovery, cancer and stem cell research, environmental and population health, translational research and health professions education research.

In addition, the new Centre for Transformative, Nutritional and Health was established in 2019, followed by another two COEs, namely the Centre for Analytical and Pharmaceutical Services, as well as the Centre for Digital Health in 2021.

These new COEs will provide various consultancy services in food, clinical nutrition, pharmaceutical, digital and healthcare informatics and also provide knowledge and skills building to professionals and the public.

Inculcating social responsibility

Moreover, IMU wants to shape medical professionals who care, through its programmes that give back to the community.

IMU started looking at how it could produce healthcare professionals with a caring attitude and who were sensitive to the needs of their communities in 2002.

Since its first fund-raising charity run held in the same year, serving the community has since become ingrained in IMU’s values and identity.

Today, its community engagement services sees IMU students, faculty and staff regularly and intentionally promoting healthy lifestyles to all layers of the community via health education, healthcare screenings and public health services.

They undertake these projects through IMU’s long-running Kampung Angkat programme (KAP), the Health and Wellness Programme and the IMU Cares programmes.

In 2013, KAP at Kampung Tekir, Malaysia won first place in the MacJannet Prize for Global Citizenship, which was established by the Talloires Network and the MacJannet Foundation to recognise exceptional student community engagement initiatives at Talloires Network member universities and contributes financially to their ongoing public service effort.

In 2019, IMU Cares was awarded the MacJannet Prize for Global Citizenship for the second time for their work in helping impoverished communities in Klang to improve their health and education, which was key to making a change in their social status.

Eye on the future

Never one to rest on its laurels, IMU is currently building its first IMU Hospital adjacent to its Bukit Jalil campus, which is scheduled to be completed in 2022, as part of its aim to make healthcare holistic.

The IMU Hospital will be the nucleus in this ecosystem, with the vision to integrate research, education and healthcare under one symbiotic system, starting with the holistic development of its students.

"We remain focused on the central philosophy that guided our founders: Access to quality medical education, innovation and imagination as a cornerstone, as well as continuous insights and reflection to visualise and realise IMU’s future."
IMU

In doing so, IMU seeks continual improvement in its programmes to ensure its graduates are in step with advances in technology, medicine and healthcare — because it has a crucial role in producing good, effective medical frontliners to serve the needs of the country in providing quality healthcare to patients, health crisis or not.

This includes adopting technology to prepare its graduates to be aligned with the new paradigm shift and healthcare delivery, as it has proven important for the future of healthcare, especially with data science and artificial intelligence.

IMU is a firm believer in digital technology, as it forges ahead with digital changes in many forms — from the type of programmes offered, the way teaching is delivered, students experiences and of course, operations.

Moreover, with the pandemic giving a stark reminder that digital technology will continue to disrupt and revolutionise the way people live, IMU has taken a step to offer its first non-health science-related programme to allow those interested in converging the use of digital technology in healthcare to learn from the best in the industry.

To answer to the market’s needs in digital times, it is also adding on a number of online distance learning and micro-credential programmes.

Each student is different and with the aid of technology, IMU has created new ways to assess student performance by adopting data analytics to better understand how each student is progressing in class and therefore, personalise a teaching and study pace that will help students learn more effectively.

Moving beyond its 30^th year, IMU's strategic plans aims to cement its leadership in healthcare education though quality and innovation, as well as to ensure that IMU's delivery and offerings are aligned to the digital age.