IIT Delhi holds workshop for Jhajjar campus; to start joint PhD programme with AIIMS

New Delhi: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, organised a one-day workshop on medical technology and healthcare ecosystem for its upcoming campus at Jhajjar in Haryana.

Niti Aayog, member for health, VK Paul, along with director general of National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG) V Srinivas; director general (life sciences of defence research and development organisation (DRDO) Upendra Kumar Singh; director AIIMS M Srinivas; and director IIT Delhi Rangan Banerjee, inaugurated the workshop.

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IIT Delhi and AIIMS New Delhi renewed an existing agreement on research and academic collaboration. The pact was signed by M Srinvas and Naresh Bhatnagar, dean, research and development, IIT Delhi. The institutes also renewed the agreement to work together in deep tech-based healthcare solutions.

IIT Delhi and AIIMS New Delhi are also planning to start a joint PhD programme in the near future. The process for this partnership is underway.

The IIT Delhi has announced to set up two extension campuses at Sonepat and Jhajjar. The Jhajjar campus, which is expected to come up within three years, is going to be the first-of-its-kind research and development centre for patient-specific drug development for cancer treatment and medical equipment technologies in the country.

The IIT Delhi-Jhajjar campus will also have facilities that will work in the areas of performance enhancement for paralympians and sports injury prevention and rehabilitation, application of AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning (ML) in digital healthcare, and medical implants, diagnostics, device design and development, along with medical imaging.

Industry, clinical and academics experts deliberated on the four topics during the workshop and charted a roadmap for realising these goals.

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M Srinivas, Director 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. We are also focusing on how to work more together with the joint working groups with monthly reviews.”

Banerjee 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”.