LAHORE, Dec 18: The University of Health Sciences is set to launch a Bio-Medical Engineering (BME) degree programme to train graduates on how to look after the costly electro-medical equipment in the public and private sector hospitals.

According to a report of the health department, over Rs1 billion electro-medical equipment is lying out of order in the public sector hospitals alone.

An 11-member BME project committee recently met under the chairmanship of UHS vice-chancellor Prof Dr Malik Husain Mubashar and reviewed the draft curriculum.

The committee agreed that the curriculum should be thoroughly reviewed by all the members on the body to make it more comprehensive and according to the current market trends. It recommended that the UHS should get all kind of help from the University of Texas, Houston.

The meeting was told that equipment worth millions of rupees was being rendered worthless due to unavailability of professionals and experts.

While considering the course contents, the committee decided that it must be ensured that the course must not be exhaustive for instructors and students. It decided to include an eight to 10-week zero semester as a part of the degree programme. The zero semester courses will be: applied mathematics, applied physics, general medical and basic electronic courses.

The committee meeting consented that the UHS should follow the examination system of the University of Texas so that its students' credit hours might easily be transferred to the US university for higher studies.

After the revision of the curriculum by the members, the committee proposed that the topic/courses should be allocated to the faculty members accordingly.

The project team also emphasized that the equipment to be purchased for the BME laboratory must be of high quality and great care should be taken to discard low-standard equipment. Two of the committee members - Inmol's director Dr Saeeda Asghar and University of Engineering and Technology's electrical engineering department's Prof Dr Tahir Izhar - agreed to help the UHS to prepare the specification sheets of the BME equipment.

Another committee member, Dr Javed Khurshid (the bio-sciences director of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Islamabad), assured the committee that the commission would provide internship facilities to the BME students at the PAEC centre/institutes free of cost. He said the commission would also provide training and monitoring facilities as well as teaching assistance to the BME students at their centres and institutes.

Dr Khurshid, however, observed that the BME curriculum should be edited according to the standards of the foreign universities. He also said the course's emphasis should be on practical training rather than theoretical portion.

In order to design the four zero semester courses, it decided that UET's Prof Izhar will prepare applied mathematics course, Government College University's CASP director Dr Ijaz Mujtaba Ghauri will design the physics course, UHS anatomy department chairman Prof Dr Amir Ali Shoro will prepare the general medical course, while UHS' information technology manager Engrr Syed Khurram Mahmood will design the basic electronics course.