International Medical Center to be developed at IIT Kharagpur

Washington, August 19 (ANI): Officials of the University of California, San Diego Health Sciences and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur have signed a historic preliminary agreement to collaborate in the development of an International Medical Center (IMC) at IIT Kharagpur.

This agreement - marked by a signing ceremony in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India - is the beginning of a strong educational, research and clinical partnership between UC San Diego Health Sciences and IIT, Kharagpur.

IIT, Kharagpur is the first and largest of the IIT chain of higher education institutes in India that focuses on engineering and technology.

The goal is to jointly establish a state-of-the-art medical center at IIT Kharagpur, which will be the first of its kind between a US University and an Indian Institution.

"This exciting partnership is an extension of UC San Diego Health Sciences' traditional core mission - to provide excellent and compassionate patient care, advance medical discoveries and educate future health care providers," said Mounir Soliman, MD, MBA, executive director of UC San Diego Health Sciences International.

"The establishment of an academic medical center to include the best in clinical care, as well as undergraduate and post-graduate programs in medical education, will be a perfect partnership - bringing together the strengths of both institutions," he added.

According to Professor Damodar Acharya, director of IIT, Kharagpur, "In addition to IIT's strong education and research focus in engineering and the sciences, we also are keenly interested in medical science and technology, including biotechnology, imaging, drug development and other important areas of medical research."

"The collaboration is believed to be among the first between an IIT and a public US university in the field of medical education and research," he said.

"The aim is to initiate technology leveraged medical education and research to provide holistic health care for the entire life cycle at affordable cost to underprivileged, poor and tribal population of the region," he added.

The agreement describes the two institution's collaborative plan to build a 300-bed, state-of-the-art hospital on land provided by IIT, Kharagpur. (ANI)