KOCHI: In a first for an Indian hospital, the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) here has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Harvard Medical School to exchange and promote best practices and research in critical care, pain medicine and anaesthesiology.
The areas of cooperation under the MOU include identifying opportunities for joint research, an active exchange programme for faculty and students from both institutions, organising joint events, workshops and training programmes to support the advancement of medicine, and the development of specialised advanced fellowships for the faculty.
“We are very excited about the potential of exchanging best practices and faculty as well as conducting collaborative research with Harvard Medical School. This high-profile collaboration will benefit medical education and research in India, and bring immense benefits in clinical care, basic science, public health, and multidisciplinary research,” AIMS medical director Dr Prem Nair said while signing the MoU. The first project for joint research between Amrita and Harvard will focus on sepsis.
The Harvard team proposed to start five-day certificate courses for postgraduate students of Amrita School of Medicine in ICU management, quality assurance and acute medicine. It also offered to throw open Harvard facilities to Amrita Hospital for simulation training in bronchoscopy, ultrasound, and pain management. The Harvard Medical School was ranked as the best medical school in the world in 2017 by Times Higher Education.
A three-member team from Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) visited hospital to sign the MoU. They included Dr Daniel S Talmor, the chief of the Department of Anaesthesia, Pain Medicine and Critical Care at BIDMC, Dr Peter J Panzica, the vice-chief of the Department of Anaesthesia at BIDMC, and Dr Satya Krishna Ramachandran, Associate Professor of Anaesthesiology at BIDMC.