IIT Madras, Ayush Ministry organise 6-day programme on indigenous system of medicine

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras is partnering with the Ministry of Ayush to organise a six-day continuing medical education programme on the theme of "technological interventions to standardize the indigenous system of medicine in India".

"There is a huge need for Indian medicines to have the technological support to take them to the next level. This will provide empirical and scientific evidence for Indian medicines. There is a need to focus on research that will lead to filing more patents for Indian medicines," said V Kamakoti, director of IIT Madras .

The ongoing event, called AYURTECH 2022-CME, will conclude on June 25. It includes lectures by experts from academia and industry across the country followed by a hands-on workshop exclusively designed for the continuing medical education (CME) participants, who are nominees from the nodal research and academic centres under the AYUSH ministry. "The Ministry of Ayush is working keenly to implement the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the National Health Policy, 2017. Hence, there is a huge scope to integrate technology and AYUSH," said Manoj Nesari, advisor to the ministry of Ayush.

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The hands-on workshop is focusing on four relevant areas -- applied plant biotechnology for sustainable production of uniform and high-quality medicinal plant biomass at a large scale; qualitative and quantitative characterization of phytochemicals in medicinal plant extracts; bioactivity analysis of medicinal plant extracts for targeted therapeutic applications with the underlying mechanism of action, and application of bioinformatics to study the pleiotropic effects of medicinal plant extracts.

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"The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that Indian traditional medicines are as relevant in treating the virus as other medicines. If we integrate technology with AYUSH, then India can lead the world," said Tanuja Nesari, Director, AII India Institute of Ayurveda, New Delhi.