Biography
Prof. Dr. Rehan Ahmed Khan's career began where all serious medical careers must begin — at the bedside. After completing his MBBS at Rawalpindi Medical College and his postgraduate surgical training in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, he earned the FRCS from the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland and the FCPS in General Surgery from the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan. His clinical training spanned Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, Central Middlesex Hospital in London, and North West London Hospitals — institutions attached to Imperial College of Medicine — before he returned to Pakistan to build something larger than a surgical career.
The turning point came when he recognised that the most urgent problem in Pakistani healthcare was not the shortage of procedures — it was the shortage of well-educated physicians. In 2008, he joined Islamic International Medical College at Riphah International University as an Assistant Professor of Surgery, and what began as a clinical appointment became a transformative academic vocation. He pursued postgraduate qualifications in health professions education with singular focus: a Joint Masters through Maastricht University and Suez Canal University in 2010, an MSc-HPE from the University of Glasgow in 2014, a Master of Health Professions Education from Riphah International University in 2016, and a PhD in Medical Education from Maastricht University — one of the world's foremost institutions in educational research — in 2021.
His doctoral work on curriculum viability — examining the standards and inhibitors that determine whether a medical curriculum can actually function as intended — has been published across multiple peer-reviewed journals and presented at major international conferences including AMEE, Ottawa, and ICME. This research strand, which began with a scoping review and culminated in validated measurement instruments adopted by institutions across the region, exemplifies the rigour and real-world applicability that characterises all of his scholarly output.
Today, Prof. Dr. Khan holds a cluster of institutional roles that few academics are positioned to hold simultaneously. As Dean of the Riphah Institute of Assessment, he oversees the examination and assessment infrastructure of one of Pakistan's largest private medical universities. As Director of Medical Education, he shapes faculty development, curriculum design, and educational policy at the institutional level. As a Professor of Surgery, he continues to teach clinical medicine to undergraduate and postgraduate students, maintaining the clinical grounding that gives his educational scholarship its credibility.
Beyond his home institution, his influence is international and growing. He sits on the Advisory Board of AMEE — the leading global body in health professions education. He is Vice President of the International Conference on Medical Education (ICME). He is President of the Society of Medical Educationists (SOME) in Pakistan. He supervises MHPE students at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, and co-supervises PhD candidates at Universiti Sains Malaysia. He is Chief Editor of the Health Professions Educator Journal (HPEJ).
His publication record exceeds 106 peer-reviewed papers and editorials, spanning topics from AI-induced metacognitive laziness in medical students to the validation of assessment instruments, programmatic assessment, curriculum integration, and the use of ChatGPT in clinical education. He is co-author of Artificial Intelligence for Health Professionals, launched at the ICME-IMEC Joint Conference in Kuala Lumpur in 2025.