IIT Kanpur to Merge Engineering with Medicine

The prestigious IIT-Kanpur has announced the setting up of its own 500-bed medical college and dedicated centre for engineering in medicine soon.

Medicine and Engineering have been the most sought after and extremely traditional streams for many decades now. Though there have been a few love-children the two have had since, such as biotechnology, biomedical engineering etc., there has never been an instance where a separate centre for Engineering in Medicine has been set up in India. IIT K has decided to do just that.

The Centre for Engineering in Medicine is all set to open its doors in October 2019 and offer Masters degree and PhD courses in medical engineering. The admissions to the courses offered by the centre will be through the usual entrance exams such as JEE or IIT JAM. The proposal for setting up the dedicated medical college is still underway and is being done so with the help from Tata trusts and the HRD ministry.

Other colleges such as BHU, IIT- Hyderabad, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Gandhinagar etc., have set up centres for integrating biology-related fields and engineering due to increased demand in the domain. 

What will this sacred union between medicine and engineering do to our already existing healthcare scenario? Will it result in some innovations that will reduce our country’s disease burden and make healthcare affordable to the masses? Will this pave a different career path for the hundreds and thousands of young doctors who pass out each year? The setting up of the Centre for Engineering in Medicine at IIT K definitely looks promising. 

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