Fawad Chaudhry advises MDCAT students to ‘forget about it’

In a tweet posted on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Minister for Science and Technology, Fawad Chaudhry, advised those students eagerly waiting for their MDCATs to ‘forget about it’ and instead, choose Biotech as a profession.

My advice to all the students there dying to take MDCAT and become doctor forget about it instead choose biotech as profession fifteen years down the line Doctor as profession ll start dying down as AI ll take over medicine/medical field Biotech is future… good luck

— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) December 2, 2020

Biotechnology, specifically Artificial Intelligence in Biotech, have proven extremely useful in the recent years. AI is used for everything from drug target identification, to image screening and predictive modelling. AI has also been managing clinical trials recently; an AI bot combs through literature and keeps track of data collected from clinical trial patients.

Approximately 125,000 Pakistani students gave the MDCAT, the medical entry test, on Sunday. 138 students are yet to give the test as they had tested positive for the coronavirus days before the test date. These students will appear for the exam on the 13th of December.

Although Mr Chaudhry is most likely speaking with insight and knowledge of where the country aspires to be in fifteen years, people have been posting negative comments underneath his tweet. Most of them seem to be disappointed as many dream about giving the MDCAT and becoming successful doctors one day, and having a high-ranking official tell them that their hard work might all be in vain isn’t necessarily something they want to hear.

For some, however, specifically current biotechnology students, his tweet serves as an extra confidence boost. Biotech students have recently been suffering from joblessness as there seems to be an apparent lack of scope for the field within the country. The tweet by Fawad Chaudhry gives them hope for the future. More students might also be choosing the field now, after the tweet.

If AI in Biotech really is the future and Fawad Chaudhry’s tweet can convince a good number of people to pursue careers in it, Pakistan could be in the running to become one of the leading countries in advancing the use of AI in the field of biotechnology.