The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) signed an MoU with Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) and launched AICTE-Inter-Institutional Biomedical Innovations Programme (IBIP) to catalyze interdisciplinary education, research and innovations between medical and engineering institutions.
The MoU was exchanged between Prof. Rajive Kumar, Member Secretary, AICTE and Dr. Taslimarif Saiyed, CEO and Director of C-CAMP, at AICTE HQ in New Delhi. AICTE Chairman Prof. TG Sitharam launched the AICTE-Inter-Institutional Biomedical Innovations Programme (IBIP), to promote education, research and innovations through facilitated, forged and focused interaction between medical and engineering institutions.
The AICTE-IBIP program is the collective endeavour of AICTE and C-CAMP to promote accessible, affordable and quality healthcare to all, making health and lives better. The objective of the program is to facilitate engineering and medical graduates, post graduates and faculty members to jointly work on the challenges from the medical domain. Beside imparting multidisciplinary education and research, the initiative will also prompt and prepare them for entrepreneurship particularly in the healthcare sector. The program will also offer a structured Bio Entrepreneurship Didactic course online, which has health sector skills council accreditation for the participants.
Launching the program AICTE Chairman highlighted, “The collaboration between engineering and medical students will foster creativity, innovation, and a deeper understanding of the complex challenges in healthcare. By leveraging their complementary skills and knowledge, students from both disciplines can develop impactful solutions that improve patient care and advance the field of medicine”.
Dr. Taslimarif of C-CAMP said that “the joint initiative of AICTE and C-CAMP to launch the Inter-Institutional Biomedical Innovations Program provides a platform for engineering and medical students to collaborate and work on interdisciplinary projects to address real-world healthcare challenges”.
Under IBIP, AICTE will provide a grant-in-aid of Rs 10 lakh against a matching contribution from Institution to develop and implement at least 10 ideas/innovations to address the challenges posed by the healthcare domain. All the Institutions selected for AICTE-IBIP will become part of a Network of all sanctioned projects to learn from each other, collaborate and enhance their performance.
Ravi Nayar, Program Director of Inter-institutional Biomedical Innovations Programme informed that C-CAMP through its flagship program will mentor, mediate, support AICTE-IBIP and conduct an awareness program to inform faculty and students of Medical and Engineering institutes of the benefits of inter-specialty teamwork and the potential for innovation and entrepreneurship in India.
