Dual Degree of MD and PhD is going to be introduced by IIT Ropar and PGIMER

The IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Ropar and PGIMER (Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research) together are designing a dual program, for the students of both the institutions will be able to pursue the courses, MD and Ph.D.

The Director of IIT-Ropar, Sarit Kumar Das said, “For instance, a student who has completed his or her MBBS will be able to pursue his MD from PGI and his Ph.D. from IIT Ropar. The student will be able to undertake both the degrees, simultaneously. In a Ph.D. program, a student has to do a thesis and conduct research, and to complete an MD degree also you have to do a one-year-long thesis. So, here, the students will not have to do an additional MD thesis, but they will conduct an integrated research thesis within the Ph.D. program.”

Further, he added that the four preparatory courses required for a Ph.D. program have also waived off in the integrated courses as the students will also be able to get a dual degree that he or she would otherwise take at least seven years to complete, also they can now pursue those courses in the MD degree.

The director of IIT-Ropar had explained that the course has been designed to cater to those medical professionals who seek to participate actively in the field of research, without being burdened solely with the clinical consultations. These models of dual degree education for medical professionals and research exist in countries like the USA, where Harvard Medical School has tie-up with MIT. Although, many such courses exist in India, where an organic tie-up can be formed between two such institutes in order to advance medical research and health technology. 

The Director of PGIMER Dr. Jagat Ram said, “We are planning to undertake many research collaborations with IIT-Ropar, and this degree will allow for such a collaboration to exist even more concretely. We know about the patient, and they have more expertise in the technological aspect of biomedical research. We have existing MoUs for certain research collaborations with IIT-Ropar already. As for the course, we are eager to initiate it, but we need to get a few approval from educational boards within PGIMER to make it a reality soon.”

This setting up MD and Ph.D. dual degree courses is a recent initiative which has been taken by the IIT-Ropar to increase the collaborations between medical professionals, doctors, and hospitals, to productively contribute to the advancements in the fields of healthcare. Dr. Das said on the state of research in the field of medicine, that the problem with medical institutions and hospitals is that they are running in such a way that it is difficult for doctors to find time to conduct research. The other issue is that institutes that are doing biomedical research are currently not collaborating with the hospitals. So, a lack of collaboration has not allowed our medical research to reach the point where it should be at by now. He also added that the gap in the collaboration between the research institutions and hospitals could be bridged by ensuring that medical schools become a part of universities, and not separate and isolated educational institutes. 

“This is also a part of the vision of the New Education Policy, which seeks to integrate all disciplines as part of one university to guarantee an interdisciplinary approach to education,” -Das. 

Also, he added that introducing such intense subjects in institutions like IIT-Ropar will be taking the drastic step which would draw resources and the attention away from efforts to strengthen the current framework of the research in the subject areas which are already offered at the institution. This is because of the risk that a young and developing university like IIT-Ropar cannot afford. “However, we have focused on strengthening our Biomedical department and we also plan to start undergraduate courses in Biomedical Engineering. The other initiative is collaborations with institutes like PGIMER and the MD and Ph.D. course tie-up was born out of this vision for collaboration,” said Das. 

IIT Ropar is a part of the consortium called ‘Bio X’, the collaboration between IIT-Ropar, IIT-Mandi, and PGIMER is to conduct the research and to create innovative technology for the advancing healthcare in India. “We have developed a few projects already using our own resources, and are beginning research work in other interesting projects together,” added Das. Also, he added that ‘Bio X’ consortium is working already on the developing MRI screening at a low cost, cancer drug delivery systems for the targeted chemotherapy and integrating Artificial Intelligence into the screening and diagnostic practices. 

“The motto of IIT-Ropar is to create collaborations which will work on individual problems to bring out original solutions to these problems, the people of this country have the right to ask us what are we doing for them because we are using public funding. Working on these healthcare solutions will address problems that will directly affect the lives of the people, so this is IIT-Ropar’s vision for the coming years,” concluded Das.