DEMEC 2025 Programme

Healthcare delivery (HCD) and health professions education (HPE) are at a pivotal turning point. Curricular reform is accelerating in response to evolving learner expectations, shifting professional identities, and rising patient demands. Innovations—particularly those driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies—are rapidly reshaping the landscape of health education and practice. Yet again, the benefits of these advancements remain disproportionately concentrated in high-income Western countries, exacerbating global inequities and marginalizing low- and middle-income regions.

As healthcare systems become increasingly complex, ethical, moral, and professional challenges intensify, prompting urgent calls for socially accountable health professionals equipped to serve diverse communities. Current geopolitical tensions are also compounding these injustices, disrupting academic collaboration, limiting mobility, and stifling the global flow of scientific knowledge. Unfortunately, many HPE programs fail to cultivate critical thinking, ethical leadership, and civic responsibility—capacities that are now more essential than ever in the AI era. Persistent systemic structural inequities are also hindering the full participation of learners and educators who diverge from dominant norms of sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, or religion. These individuals regularly encounter injustices such as implicit bias, discriminatory practices, and restricted access to mentorship and advancement opportunities despite institutional commitments to equity.

 In a time when AI is the new technological hype, its integration into healthcare and education demands that we not only harness its potential but also interrogate its implications for inclusion, justice, and accessibility for the doctors we are training. Logically, unexpected challenges are expected to change the current global academic discourse and underscore the urgent need to reassess our medical training programs. During this meeting, we shall examine how to foster genuinely inclusive learning environments, ensure equitable access to innovation, and promote social justice in health professions education worldwide.