All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and IIT Kharagpur are exploring opportunities for "unique joint initiatives" in academics and research, including a super-speciality hospital.
 

Senior professors of both the institutions are in discussion to take the initiatives forward. "IIT Kharagpur and AIIMS are planning some unique joint initiatives in academics and research that will open new directions in education and take technology-enabled healthcare directly to the people at large," said Prof P P Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur. The institutions are looking forward to strengthen ongoing activities through collaborative education programmes, research and collaboration for management and analysis of hospital data, he said.

"Both institutions have unique strengths and through this collaboration, we hope to explore and exchange them. IIT Kharagpur has expertise in developing medical devices and diagnostics, medical imaging and analysis, systems modelling, big data analysis and machine learning from others. "These can be put to use in medical science to improve on experience driven procedures to technology centric medical services," said Prof Suman Chakraborty, faculty coordinator of the initiative and Head of School of Medical Science and Technology, IIT Kharagpur.

Prof Randeep Guleria, Director, AIIMS Delhi, said the medical domain is becoming progressively technology intensive, which puts the matter of IIT Kharagpur providing medical and allied education in perspective. Modelling, simulation, and analytics will be essential tools for medical intervention in the years to come, he said. IIT Kharagpur and AIIMS would also work towards encouraging more medical practitioners in the research domain.

The collaborative initiatives would foster cross-migration of medical professionals to the research domain, and engineering researchers to work on outstanding clinical problems, according to professors of the two institutions. Patient load on super-speciality hospitals like AIIMS may need to be more decentralised through technology-driven primary healthcare initiatives, they said. With the super-speciality hospital at IIT Kharagpur expected to be operational by the end of this year, AIIMS will also collaborate for data processing, analytics and management of medical data in addition to digitised medical consultation, human resource support and advisory role in procurements.