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Harvard Medical School has introduced its healthcare simulation programme to Indian school students. Bengaluru became the first city in India to host a globally recognised healthcare simulation programme developed by Harvard Medical School MEDscience in association with The Anandi School, giving school students early exposure to clinical decision-making, AI-driven innovation and modern medical technology.
HMS MEDscience, a hands-on learning initiative of Harvard Medical School that has worked with thousands of students, educators and professionals worldwide, ran a six-day immersive programme. Designed to replicate real-world healthcare environments through high-fidelity simulations, the programme enabled students to experience how medical teams diagnose, collaborate and respond to complex healthcare challenges in real time, a model widely adopted across leading medical education institutions globally.
The initiative received over 1,000 applications from students across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi, from which just 20 students from grades 6 to 10 were selected to participate. Throughout the week, students worked through patient cases, cancer diagnostics scenarios and advanced clinical simulations while also exploring emerging areas such as robotics-assisted surgery, computer-vision-based AI models and med-tech problem solving.
Over six days, they built and tested robotics systems, conceptualised healthcare solutions, learned from doctors, scientists, AI specialists and healthcare entrepreneurs, ultimately presented their ideas in a Shark Tank–style. As a part of the programme, students also visited C CAMP (Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms), met scientists and got exposure on AI drug discovery for cancer treatment.
During the final showcase today, four student teams presented high-impact healthcare innovation prototype. These were Team Aegis which built a surgeon-centric real-time feedback system to maintain precision in extremely narrow endoscopic corridors, safeguarding the spinal cord and nerves.
Team Safepath developed a virtual safety corridor that dynamically tracked depth and motion, clearly indicating safe and risky zones to prevent unsafe instrument drift near sensitive nerve roots. Team NeuroSafe introduced surgical decision-making, enabling surgeons to understand proximity to neural structures with clarity even in low-visibility conditions. Team Spinosaurus worked on a nerve-to-tumour distance monitoring to support safer surgical decisions.
Team Aegis with A Aarika Rao, Atmica Anshuman Dube, Tanvi Guda, Harith Seth and Aryan Nayak were declared winners by a jury comprising Pratham Mittal, Shark Tank India Judge and Founder of Masters’ Union and Tetr College of Business, Chinmaya Golecha, Principal, Peak XV Partners and Dr. Kalyan Bommakanti, Neurosurgeon, Apollo Hospitals.
Anna Yost, programme director, HMS MEDscience, said, “We were delighted to bring this programme to India for the first time, and Bengaluru with its strong culture of technology, research and education proved to be the perfect city to begin this journey. It was exciting to see students engage with real clinical thinking, teamwork and applied technology at such a young age.”
The core simulations and biomedical curriculum were led by the HMS MEDscience team, while Anandi School’s innovative educators guided daily labs, robotics builds, applied learning and student mentoring throughout the programme.
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