Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur and  All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Jodhpur have created a robust multidisciplinary framework to spawn deep-tech innovation-based healthcare products.

In order to achieve India’s Vision Viksit Bharat@2047 goals with ‘health’ at its centre, the two institutes have developed a pipeline of prototypes of novel medical technologies, developed out of joint academic programmes in medtech, which is training future of medtech entrepreneurs.

Explaining the salient features of this collaboration, Prof. Santanu Chaudhary, Director, IIT Jodhpur said, “Indian patients receive medical technologies that were created for the developed world and are now adapted for local needs. This method of introducing novel medical technologies in India needs significant improvement as it cannot capture the diverse needs of Indian patients. This collaboration is a step in that direction to bring about solutions to cater to Indian needs. This first-of-its-kind joint degree programme offered by IIT Jodhpur and AIIMS Jodhpur lets students identify needs from real-life problems and create deep-tech solutions.”

IIT and AIIMS Jodhpur offer joint programmes in medical technologies to students from engineering, medicine, nursing, bioengineering and allied fields. Students from these diverse backgrounds are mentored through three phases of this academic programme: Identify, Invent, and Implement. In the last phase of implementation, the students earn Biodesign fellowships, Prayas grants, and startup seed support to build small enterprises. 

Both institutes have created an ecosystem of innovation and have also incentivised it to promote the conversion of deep-tech research into products and technologies.  Some of the startups and technologies that spun out of the joint medtech programme have created futuristic technologies in the areas of novel syringe design, digitally designing maxillofacial prosthetics, device to correct nasal septal defect without surgery, 3D cell models for precision oncology, non-animal disease models for drugs/formulation testing, nanosensor technologies for early disease diagnosis.