IIT Delhi, AIIMS New Delhi Renew MoU for Research and Academic Collaboration

New Delhi: A one-day workshop was organised at the IIT Delhi Hauz Khas campus on Monday, where medical and healthcare Industry experts held discussions on MedTech and Healthcare Ecosystem for the upcoming campus of IIT Delhi in Haryana’s Jhajjar.

The workshop was inaugurated by Dr. V.K. Paul, Member Health, NITI Aayog; Shri V. Srinivas, Secretary, DAR & PG, and Director General, NCGG; Dr. Upendra Kumar Singh, DG-Life Sciences, DRDO; Prof. M. Srinivas, Director, AIIMS, New Delhi; and Prof. Rangan Banerjee, Director, IIT Delhi.

On this occasion, IIT Delhi and AIIMS New Delhi renewed an existing MoU to continue the research and academic collaboration between both institutions. The MoU was signed by the Director, AIIMS; the Director, IIT Delhi, and Prof. Naresh Bhatnagar, Dean, R&D, IIT Delhi.

The IIT Delhi - Jhajjar campus, which is likely to come up within three years, is going to be the country’s first-of-its-kind R&D Centre for Patient-Specific Drug Development for Cancer Treatment and medical equipment technologies.

The campus will also work in the areas of Performance Enhancement for Paralympians and Sports Injury Prevention & Rehabilitation; Medical Implants, Diagnostics, Device Design and Development; and Application of AI/ML in Digital Healthcare along with Medical Imaging. The campus plans to offer many new courses & certificate programs for skilling the workforce for these futuristic technologies.

During the workshop, clinical, academics and industry experts deliberated on the above four healthcare and medical technology-related domains and charted a roadmap for realizing the goals.

At the workshop, the two leading Institutes also renewed the MoU and recommitted towards working together for deep tech-based healthcare solutions.

IIT Delhi and AIIMS New Delhi are also planning to start a joint PhD program in the near future, for which the process is underway.

Prof. M Srinivas, Director, AIIMS New Delhi, said, “If we are looking at the Atmanirbhar Bharat, I think there is a fresh need for us to innovate, design and develop. This cannot happen only in medical institutions, we have to sit together, work together, design together, evaluate, and go to the trials. That is where the roles of the AIIMS and IIT come together, this is definitely a requirement for the country right now. For working together, we have recommitted ourselves with a renewed MoU. We are also focusing on how to work more together with the joint working groups with monthly reviews. A joint MD-PhD programme is under discussion and I am confident that it will go through. There should not be any problem given that both institutions have functional academic autonomy.”

Prof. Rangan Banerjee, Director, IIT Delhi, said, “We want the IIT Delhi-Jhajjar campus to be a co-created healthcare hub. For us, it is one of the most important initiatives going forward. This will propel IIT Delhi to the next level and I hope it will be beneficial for the AIIMS as well. We need to plan carefully and have clarity of vision. For the IIT Delhi - Jhajjar campus, some of the resources may hopefully come from the government, some from the alumni and some from the industry. We need to create a new model of collaboration between medical, engineering and science. A model that will hopefully be replicated by other institutions in the country”.

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