The proposal of IITs offering pure medicine courses could become a distant dream, if the medical fraternity has its way. In a high powered meeting convened by the health ministry on Wednesday evening, a large section of medical community is learnt to have expressed stiff resistance to the idea of IITs being granted permission to roll out MBBS courses.
However, the top medical brass felt that IITs should focus on offering PG courses, PhD programmes and specialised courses in healthcare delivery platforms and other niche and underexplored areas like biomedical engineering, nanomedicine (medical applications of nanotechnology), bioinformatics which require overlap of technology with medicine.
?A majority of doctors, medical educationists who were part of the meeting are not in favour of allowing IITs to offer MBBS courses. The reservation of the medical community stems from apprehensions that, if centres of excellence are allowed to diversify limitlessly without an eye on synergy, then hypothetically speaking, AIIMS could start offering engineering courses tomorrow and Maulana Azad Medical College may want to venture into law courses. This wouldn?t be feasible and would erode value from the core competence of the institution,? said an eminent doctor who was part of the meeting.
?We have voiced our dissent in the meeting on the proposal of IITs becoming medical colleges. Centres of excellence have a raison d??tre. This proposal has built in commercial incentive for educational institutes but it can dilute both the quality and brand of the historical institutes,? said another doctor who attended the meeting. The secretary of health, K Sujatha Rao had sought wide ranging participation of representatives from AIIMS, PGIMER, JIPMER, NIMHANS, National Institute of Communicable Diseases, CMC Vellore, Medical Council of India and renowned doctors among others. The health ministry is now expected to articulate its stance on the feasibility of IITs offering medical courses and forward the same to the ministry of Human Resource and Development.