Call for standardising clinical practices to meet local healthcare challenges – Many more

Highlighting Pakistan’s unique healthcare challenges, experts at a two-day symposium organised by the Aga Khan University (AKU) called for developing ethically transparent evidence-based guidelines to help standardise local clinical practices. A flagship conference of the university, the 25th National Health Sciences Research Symposium (NHSRS) brought together national and international experts to further the dialogue on evidence-based medical guidelines. They described the event as both timely and relevant, given the pressing need for contextually relevant treatment for diseases, and said that it would help build upon the existing work done by AKU’s Centre for Clinical Best Practices (CCBP). “The move from disease-oriented guidelines to community-oriented contextual guidelines is key, but comes with its own set of challenges that need to be addressed. The system also needs to have its maintenance and improvement mechanisms,” said Prof Maj General Sohail Sabir, who is a senior nephrologist at Combined Military Hospital Rawalpindi, during his plenary talk on challenges and their solutions in the development of contextual guidelines.