A project team drawn from the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) Developers Hub has undertaken a series of academic–industry engagements aimed at strengthening competence in systems design, requirements analysis, and professional software engineering practice.

The engagements formed part of an ongoing academic exercise involving the Hospital Management System (HMS) Prototype Project Team, a specialised group within the Hub constituted to develop a supervised academic prototype for healthcare administrative systems. The activities were designed to expose the students to real operational contexts and professional expectations that inform robust system design and responsible system development.

The team undertook observational and discussion-based visits to selected healthcare institutions between January 29 and February 3,2026.

The visits were deliberately structured to support requirements discovery and systems understanding. 

Through guided discussions and selective unit walk-throughs, the project team examined how institutional work is organised and how information systems are expected to support administrative and operational processes within healthcare environments.

The engagements were strictly observational and discussion-based, with no access to hospital systems, patient data, or clinical operations. The focus remained on understanding workflows, constraints, information flows, and institutional expectations that inform sound system architecture, data governance, and ethical software design.

 
As part of the same academic engagement series, the project team participated in an educational visit to the Google Accra AI Community Centre (AICC).

The session, held jointly with students from Academic City University, featured a research deep dive into applied artificial intelligence, a student innovation showcase, and a focused discussion on career pathways and professional preparation in modern software engineering and AI-related fields.

While the research themes extended beyond healthcare, the engagement provided exposure to contemporary engineering practices, system-level thinking, and responsible approaches to integrating intelligent capabilities within enterprise software environments.
 
The engagements were undertaken within the Department of Information Technology Studies, as part of a project-based learning approach that emphasises early exposure to real institutional systems well before final-year project work.

The UPSA Developers Hub operates as a Department-guided, student-led academic development platform that supports continuous skills development beyond the classroom.

With an estimated membership of over 350 students, the Hub runs structured whole-group trainings and progressively assigns committed members into project teams as readiness and capacity grow. Participation in project teams is therefore selective and incremental, ensuring depth of engagement and academic quality.

Within this structure, students are progressively introduced into project teams under senior guidance. As they advance, they transition into module leads and project coordinators, mentoring newer entrants and supporting continuity of skills development across cohorts.

The recent engagements reflect a deliberate effort to align Information Technology education with professional practice through structured academic–industry interaction. By grounding learning in real institutional contexts, the Department of Information Technology Studies continues to reinforce the position that effective computing education must integrate scholarship, disciplined system design, and sustained development practice.