Acknowledging that India was "lagging" on the research front, more so in the medical field, the government today pitched for multi-institutional collaboration in the area and asked AIIMS, IITs and other top institutions to play a leading role in it.
Secretary of Department of Biotechnology K VijayRaghavan said the growing economy has thrown up an "extraordinary opportunity" for "extraordinary synergy" across multiple sectors.
"If you talk of this region, you have AIIMS, and Safdarjung (Hospital) in the vicinity, and IIT-Delhi and JNU are not far. And, then you have National Institute of Immunology and South Campus (of Delhi University). But these institutions have grown in relative isolation of each other," he told a function at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences here.
"Now, that may be necessary for developing institutional capability. But once you have developed this capability, then you (institutions) must through open your walls (for multi-sectoral partnership) as the growing economy presents an extraordinary opportunity for extraordinary synergy among them," he said.
"People say, we don't have the Stanfords and the CalTechs, and I say they are staring at our face," he said.
VijayRaghavan was speaking at the inauguration ceremony of AIIMS Cohort Study Centre in its premises.
Union Health Secretary C K Mishra said if there is one sphere where "we have failed, it is research".
"And it is not that we lack capabilities. We have a huge pool of talent but still not much being done in research area. Research needs a lot of investment and in India more often than not the immediate takes over the important.
"Initiatives like the cohort centre would prove valuable in understanding the causes of the diseases and give us some direction as India is battling with duality of communicable and non-communicable diseases," he said.
Cohort studies are type of medical research used to investigate the causes of disease, establishing links between risk factors and health outcomes. They are planned in advance and carried out over a future period of time.
"All good institutions like AIIMS must come together and put their brains together... And I must say that if there is in any area where the investment needs to increase dramatically, it is research, and more so in the medical field," he said.
Director of AIIMS Dr M C Misra, Head of Department of Neurology and Principal Investigator of the cohort study Dr Kameshwar Prasad and Counsellor for Science, Technology & Innovation at the Embassy of the Netherlands, Jelle Nijdam were also present on the occasion.
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