Innovations in Health and Basic Sciences Education: Teaching and Learning for Interdisciplinary Knowledge in Future Medical and Health Students

The last decade has witnessed a remarkable expansion of innovative teaching and learning strategies in higher education. In Health and Basic Sciences, such innovations are particularly critical as they directly shape professional competencies, from clinical reasoning to foundational scientific understanding. Emerging technologies such as simulation and AI offer transformative opportunities for personalized learning, authentic assessment, and curriculum integration, while frameworks like SoTL enable these practices to be rigorously evaluated and disseminated as scholarly contributions. Recent studies highlight the importance of conceptualizing education as a service co-produced by educators, students, and institutions, where innovation is grounded in interaction, community, and sustainability. Despite these advances, systematic evidence and comparative frameworks remain limited, underscoring the need for a global, multidisciplinary dialogue on innovation in health and basic sciences education.

Higher education in Health and Basic Sciences is at a turning point. Universities are expected not only to prepare graduates for increasingly complex professional environments but also to adapt to the rapid pace of technological change and the evolving expectations of learners, institutions, and society. Traditional approaches to teaching, learning, and curriculum design often struggle to keep pace with these demands. In the Basic Sciences, the arrival of educational technologies such as Artificial Intelligence—when combined with active learning strategies—has challenged educators to design curricula that foster integrated and meaningful learning of foundational concepts. In Health and Medical Sciences, teaching methodologies have been in constant evolution, aiming to equip future professionals with the competencies needed to navigate today’s healthcare systems. With this Research Topic, we seek to bring together high-quality contributions that illustrate and critically analyze educational innovations with proven impact on student learning and professional formation. By focusing on pedagogy, assessment, simulation, and the thoughtful use of digital tools, and by grounding this work within the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) framework, the collection aims to emphasize the value of systematically sharing innovation to inspire sustainable transformation in higher education.

This Research Topic invites submissions that address educational innovations in Health and Basic Sciences, spanning classroom, laboratory, clinical, and institutional contexts. Areas of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Active learning strategies and their evaluation through SoTL.
• Simulation and immersive technologies for training in health professions.
• Innovative assessment and feedback mechanisms.
• Curriculum design and redesign integrating digital tools and interprofessional education.
• Artificial Intelligence applications in teaching and assessment.
• Institutional strategies for scaling and sustaining innovation.
We welcome original research, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, case studies, methodological papers, and perspective articles.

Submissions should connect empirical findings with educational theory, provide evidence of impact, and propose models with potential for replication and scalability across diverse higher education settings.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Educational Innovation Health Sciences Education Basic Sciences Pedagogy Simulation-based Learning Assessment and Feedback Curriculum Design Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Higher Education Transformation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.