IIT-Madras Gets New Dept for Medical Sciences and Tech, to Offer ‘First-of-its-kind’ Course | Details Here

The IIT-Madras on Thursday launched a brand new division for medical sciences and know-how, which can mix medical schooling and engineering to convey modern practices into scientific settings. The goal is to supply scientists and engineers with a skillset to advance medical analysis, in addition to prepare clinicians to take an engineering strategy to the human physique and provides engineers a scientific understanding.

The division has already established collaborations with premier hospitals and medical establishments in India and can have ‘professors of practice, who are top medical doctors in India and abroad, and who also contributed to the development of the curriculum. The courses include BS in medical sciences and engineering (four-year programme), PhD programme for doctors, MS by research for doctors, MS in medical sciences and engineering as well as a PhD programme for science and engineering graduates.

The 4-year course will offer specialisation in a number of areas through elective subjects and will cover emerging areas at the cutting edge of medicine – like the application of artificial intelligence in healthcare, new device development and drug discovery, medical image analysis, and digital twins.

Additionally, as per the website of the PhD programme, as the first-of-its-kind course in India, it aims to train physician-scientists who will lead innovation in healthcare and boost research in vital fields of medicine. The programme will allow clinicians to explore a problem area of their interest, either independently or in collaboration with an engineer who will support the research.

The admission procedure will be through the IISER Aptitude Test (IAT). Candidates must have passed the Class XII (or equivalent) examination with a science stream in 2022 or 2023 from any board recognised by the council of boards of department education in India.

The department was inaugurated in the presence of Lakshmi Narayanan, co-founder of Cognizant; and Prof V Kamakoti, director at IIT Madras among other stakeholders, including medical clinicians on the steering committee of the department.

Kamakoti said: “Our mission is to unite professionals from medicine and technology to create groundbreaking solutions for medical issues that were once unsolvable. Our aim is to improve treatment options and revolutionise healthcare. Continuing our mission of ‘IITM for all’, we aspire to supply technological interventions within the discipline of medication that shall allow high quality and inexpensive medicare to achieve each citizen of our nation.”

“With this interdisciplinary approach to improve healthcare outcomes by leveraging engineering and medical knowledge, new technologies can be developed that monitor vital parameters of organs, detect signs of disease, and help to provide targeted prevention and treatment options. As engineering and medicine continue to converge, the possibilities are endless,” mentioned Prof Boby George, head of the brand new division.

Narayanan mentioned collaborative analysis in medical sciences may make India a world chief in scientific outcomes. He mentioned India’s management in area, nuclear, digital and biotechnology had proven analysis functionality and potential, and increasing this functionality to drugs was a pure subsequent step.

“Innovation can be found at the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, chemistry, microbiomes, cognitive science and other sciences. Investment in such collaborative research and practice is sure to produce outstanding clinical results,” he added.