Union Health Minister J.P Nadda on Monday said that the government has started setting up super specialty blocks in 70 of its existing medical colleges across the country.
"The government encourages the setting up of new medical colleges and strengthening the existing ones. Existing medical colleges are being upgraded by setting up of super specialty blocks in 70 such medical colleges in the entire country," he said in his address at the sixth Convocation of PGIMER at RML hospital here.
Nadda also said that the government is expanding the network of the medical colleges in a big way by upgrading 58 district hospitals to medical colleges, while 20 state cancer institutes and 50 tertiary cancer care centre will also be set up.
Urging the hospital administration to harness the tremendous potential of IT services in medical education and health care delivery, he said his ministry is "taking concrete steps to expand the scope of telemedicine -- bringing in tele-education, tele-consultation, tele-radiology".