Tbilisi Medical Academy offers medical and healthcare-related programs designed to support modern education standards and prepare students for professional careers. Our programs emphasise academic foundation, early clinical training, and thinking, and the practical skills required in healthcare.
Through CIMED, Tbilisi Medical Academy is building a modern medical education system based on innovation, integration, and outcomesโensuring that every graduate is prepared not only to pass exams, but to succeed in real clinical practice with competence and compassion.
The Center for Innovation in Medical Education (CIMED) was established at Petre Shotadze Tbilisi Medical Academy (TMA) in 2021 as a strategic academic platform dedicated to strengthening teaching quality, modernizing the curriculum, and improving learning outcomes across the Medicine program.
CIMED is chaired by internationally recognized medical education experts from the University of Antwerp (Belgium)โProfessor Josette Denekens and Professor Herman Van Rossumโwho have been actively supporting TMA's long-term academic transformation. Their work at TMA includes curriculum development, faculty training, and student-focused innovation projects.
CIMED's central purpose is to introduce innovative teaching and learning strategies while continuously updating TMA's educational programs in line with international medical education standards. The Center supports a clear institutional priority: developing medical doctors who demonstrate clinical competence, strong reasoning skills, professional communication, and compassion in patient care.
A key focus of CIMED is strengthening the integration between basic sciences and clinical disciplines, ensuring that students learn medicine as a connected system rather than isolated subjects. This integration is essential for building clinical thinking and long-term professional readiness.
CIMED supports the transition from traditional teacher-centered education to a student-centered and competency-based medical education model, where students actively participate in the learning process. This approach encourages deeper understanding, independent thinking, and long-term retention of knowledge.
One of CIMED's major priorities is the implementation of self-directed learning, helping students develop the ability to manage large volumes of medical information, set learning goals, and reflect on their progressโskills required for lifelong medical practice.
To support students early in their academic journey, CIMED is introducing the first-year project "Learn to Learn", designed to strengthen learning strategies from the very first semester. This initiative helps students adapt to medical education demands, improve academic performance, and build confidence through structured guidance and reflection.
A major outcome of CIMED's work has been the development of interactive patient cases for clinical reasoning training. These cases are built on real patient scenarios and guide students step-by-step through the full medical problem-solving process, including history taking, physical examination, differential diagnosis, prognosis, intervention planning, and reflective learning.
This model is developed collaboratively:
Through this approach, CIMED strengthens one of the most critical competencies in modern medicine: Clinical Reasoning.
CIMED is also expanding the use of TMA's advanced learning technologies, including the Anatomage virtual anatomy table, which contains a large library of patient cases. The long-term goal is to build a TMA-designed patient case library, accessible for teaching across different semesters and clinical disciplines.
CIMED also serves as a platform for faculty collaboration and professional development. One of the most significant innovations promoted by the Center is the integration of clinical and basic science teachers into shared teaching formats. This model encourages teamwork, improves course alignment, and strengthens curriculum coherence.
CIMED strengthens the learning environment at TMA by ensuring that students receive a more modern and practice-oriented medical education. Its work benefits students through:
Importantly, CIMED promotes a medical education philosophy that goes beyond biological diagnosis alone and moves toward the bio-psycho-social model, preparing future doctors to understand patients in a holistic and human-centered way.
CIMED supports TMA's long-term academic strategy to produce doctors who are not only successful graduates but also future leaders of Georgian healthcare. This includes expanding primary care and family medicine capacity, strengthening public health education, and building a sustainable curriculum renewal system that continuously evolves with global medical standards.
CIMED's vision is to establish a curriculum model with a built-in mechanism for innovation, where teachers and students contribute to continuous improvement. In the future, senior clinical students may also participate in developing new patient cases based on real clinical experience, creating a learning cycle where students become active partners in shaping medical education at TMA.