The Ministry of Ayush, the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences, and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have called for proposals to establish integrative health research centres at the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) under its extramural programme.
The Ayush-ICMR Advanced Centre for Integrative Health Research scheme is aimed at harnessing the mutual understanding and research environment between different systems of medicine, leading to integrative health research.
The proposal comes against the backdrop of the Union government’s bid for traditional Indian medicine to be included on the World Health Organisation list. The inclusion of Ayurveda and related systems on the WHO list will provide them access to a common language that allows health professionals to share standardised information across the world.
Integrating medicine systems
The new scheme will help develop integrative health research by combining the Ayush system with conventional biomedicine and modem technology to create holistic health care, resulting in improved patient outcomes through innovations related to diagnostics and preventive health, as well as treatment methods.
As of now, only those from AIIMS institutes can apply under this scheme, which will provide a maximum budget of ₹6 crore per centre for an initial period of three years, which can be extended up to ₹10 crore for a period of five years.
The venture will also seek to identify gaps in knowledge and priority areas where the approach of integrative medicine may have potential, and conduct integrative research in these priority areas to generate robust evidence.
Protocols for priority diseases
“We will also develop Integrative management protocols with inputs from both traditional and modern medicine in the identified priority diseases based on the generated evidence and carry out mechanistic studies to explain the integrative medicine approach,” a senior Health Ministry official said.
He added that there was a need for an integrated healthcare regime that can guide health policies and programmes in the future. “India has an advantage in this global resurgence of interest as it has a rich heritage of indigenous medical knowledge coupled with a robust infrastructure and skilled workforce in contemporary medicine,” notes the proposal.
Recently, a memorandum of agreement between the Ayush Ministry and ICMR was signed at an inter-ministerial level to promote high impact research on integrative health to generate evidence in priority areas of national importance in healthcare, using modern scientific methods.
This is a joint effort to establish Ayush-ICMR Centres for Advanced Health Research at AIIMS in phases. They will also jointly conduct high-quality clinical trials on promising integrative therapies for disease conditions of national importance, to generate evidence for wider acceptance.
