A first of its kind study on the quality of medical research in India has found that nearly 60 per cent of the medical institutions had not published a single research paper in the last decade. The remaining 40 per cent research output between 2005 and 2014 came from the top 25 medical institutions.
The States which had the largest number of private medical colleges — like Karnataka and Kerala — fared the worst with over 90 per cent of the colleges having no publications to show.
The paper was published on Tuesday in the Journal for Current Medicine Research and Practice.
There are a total of 579 medical institutes in the government and private sectors in India. Out of these, 316 are governed by the Medical Council of India (MCI) while the remaining 263 are under the National Board of Examinations (NBE). The total research output of these institutions between 2005 and 2014 was 101,034 papers, the average number of publications per institution being 14.5 papers a year.
However, there were 332 (57.3%) institutions that did not publish a single paper during this 10-year period, states the paper co-authored by Dr. Samiran Nundy, head of the department of Gastroenterology & Liver Transplant at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
The top institutions, on the basis of research output, were the All-India Institute of Medical sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh, the Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore, the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) in Lucknow and the King George Medical College (KGMC) in Lucknow. The total research output from the top 25 medical institutes was 41,256 — constituting over 40 per cent of the total cumulative research output coming out of India.
The authors of the paper called for a ‘drastic overhaul” of medical education in the country. Their research showed that medical education had become a business.
There is little interest in research which is not thought to be a profitable activity.
Dr. Nundy argues that the most important reason is “the lack of incentives to do research and publish, because most faculty promotions, which in other countries depend a lot on research output, are in India usually time-bound, based on seniority and, unfortunately, often influenced by political and bureaucratic ‘contacts.’ Most faculty and students in Indian medical institutions are discouraged from embarking on a research project, let alone writing a paper.”
— source thehindu.com