Four Indian Medical Institutes in the top 10 global list of med colleges with published research
According to a recent review of the world’s largest database of peer reviewed literature India has a handful of the best medical universities.
Four medical colleges in India rank among the top 10 universities globally that published the most research between 2004-2014. On the other hand, 60% of the country’s medical colleges and teaching hospitals have not published any research in the last decade. Only 25 institutions published more than 100 papers a year, which form 40.3% of India’s total research output of just over 100,000 papers over the last decade.
On the contrary, the annual research output for Massachusetts General Hospital was more than 4,600 and the Mayo Clinic was 3,700. AIIMS New Delhi with more than 1,100 annual publications is ranked third.
What is even more shocking is that 332 of the 579 medical colleges don’t have a single publication during this period. States with a large number of private medical colleges did the worst, with states like Karnataka and Kerala not having any publications at all.
It is a good acheivement for Indian medical colleges to be a part of this list. It shows that focused and promoted research does pay off. AIIMS (Delhi), PGMIR (Chandigarh), CMC Vellore and Sanjay Gandhi PGIMS (Lucknow) is proof that good medical education should be rooted in research. Encouragement for applied research alone isn’t sufficient. Incentivising research will be the best way to promote research.