IIT act to be ammended to include medicine; Despite objections by the Health Ministry IIT Kharagpur to start medical school in collaboration with Indian Railways
April 22nd, 2010
Following is an excerpt from a report in Times of India.
In a written reply in Lok Sabha on Wednesday, minister of state for HRD D Purandeshwari said the ministry has decided to amend the IIT Act, the law that governs IITs, to include medical science. The health ministry had said that IITs should not be allowed to start conventional courses in medicine.
The amendment, Purandeshwari said, would help IITs to offer programmes bringing together the diverse disciplines of medicine and engineering. Referring to the health ministry’s objection, she said, "However, appreciating the fact that the modern trends in medical education and research in technology and medicine in all the developed and most of the developing countries are seen hand-in-hand, the government proposes to incorporate `medicine’ in the IIT Act."
Purandeswari said the programme would bring the two important disciplines of medicine and engineering together.
… IIT Kharagpur has come up with a concrete proposal in this regard and plans to start a medical college in collaboration with Indian Railways. At a meeting of experts in the health ministry in February this year, it was observed that IITs should start courses on health information technology, biomedical engineering and e-health rather than running a hospital or starting MBBS courses.
There are several lessons that Odisha can draw from this.
- As Purna Mishra suggested in a comment, VSSUT and the VSS Medical College in Burla should combine to form a single university.
- NIT Rourkela and IIT Bhubaneswar should consider adding a medical college as part of the institute; NIT could include the proposed ESI medical college and IIT could include the proposed Railways medical college.
Entry Filed under: Bhubaneswar-Cuttack-Puri- Khurda area (1),ECOR Medical College,ESI Medical College,ESI Medical Colleges,IIT Bhubaneswar,NIT, Rourkela,Rourkela-Rajgangpur area (2),Sambaplpur-Burla-Jharsuguda-Baragarh area (4),VSS Medical College, Burla,VSS Medical University, Burla (mentioned),VSS University of Technology (formerly UCE Burla)