IIT Kanpur to build super-specialty teaching hospital with a medical college campus

The proposed hospital with a medical college will have a built-up area of more than 1 million square feet and will be India's first super-specialty teaching hospital with a medical college campus.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur is all set to build a School of Medical Research and Technology (SMRT), a medical school with Centres of Excellence (CoE) and a first-of-its-kind super-specialty teaching hospital in India. Combining medicine with engineering and encouraging cross-disciplinary learning, SMRT will provide an ecosystem that promotes the development of technology-based interventions for diagnosis, surveillance, management, mitigation, and prevention of diseases. IIT Kanpur has appointed HOSMAC, a healthcare management and planning consultancy to design the SMRT.

The proposed hospital with a medical college will have a built-up area of more than 1 million square feet and will be India's first super-specialty teaching hospital with a medical college campus. IIT Kanpur already provides an ecosystem for innovation and incubation in biomedical research and healthcare and has collaborations with medical colleges and hospitals across the country. SMRT will complete the missing link of a clinical set up on campus and address the challenges posed by a distance that affect the overall outcome, said sources.

"This new initiative will bring about a sea change in innovative research that addresses medical problems through a robust R&D focus to develop need-driven medical devices and technologies. The institute is envisaged to be a one-of-its-kind medical school that would offer EnMed (Engineering in Medicine) programmes wherein medical graduates will also be trained in engineering disciplines and vice versa to successfully bridge the technology gap and offer solutions to medical needs that are unique to India," said Prof Abhay Karandikar, Director IIT Kanpur.

In the first phase of the project, the institute will offer postgraduate courses such as cardiology & cardiothoracic surgery, urology & nephrology, medical and surgical gastroenterology, neurology & neurosurgery and oncology. The idea is to encourage innovation and research development in these fields and address the dearth of super-specialists in the country. It will be open for MBBS admissions in phase II of the project.

Sources said HOSMAC was initially appointed by Tata Trusts to prepare a detailed business plan for IIT Kanpur to assess the feasibility of starting a medical school within its campus. HOSMAC is now appointed for preparing the master plan and to undertake detailed architecture and engineering design of the campus.

"We have conceptualised the super-specialty hospital as a floor-wise medical specialisation stack, having its own clinical space (like OPD, IPD and diagnostics) with academic research blocks," said Dr Vivek Desai, managing director of HOSMAC. 

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