KOCHI : Perhaps for the first time in the country, startup innovation centres will be set up at medical colleges in the state. The proposed Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centres (IEDCs) aim to attract doctors and medical students into innovation and entrepreneurship in the health-tech and med-tech sectors. Until now, these IEDCs have been functional at all the engineering and arts and science colleges in the state.
According to Anoop Ambika, CEO of Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), “This will develop a robust health-tech and med-tech startup ecosystem in the state. This is the era of precision medicine. A lot of advancements are being made in the med-tech sector. So, the thought that the doctors and medical students who are continuously in contact with the patients and also dealing with diseases would be a better choice to come up with innovative products led to the idea of setting up IEDCs in the medical colleges in the state,” he said.
“Things are changing at a fast pace. The disease identification process is changing and the Internet of Things (IoT) is being used for drug delivery,” he said.
Speaking more about the initiative, IMA state president Dr Joseph Benaven said, “This was one of IMA’s top priority agendas. We wanted to introduce doctors to innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovations in the medical and healthcare sectors can happen only with the intellectual inputs obtained from the doctors. Hence, we put a thrust that doctors too need to be involved in this and motivate them to take up entrepreneurship.”
KSUM and the Kerala Medical Technology Consortium (KMTC) had submitted a proposal in early 2023 regarding this, he added. “Nothing happened. Then, the IMA started pushing the idea and met up with the chief secretary, IT secretary, health secretary and the KSUM. We didn’t have an inkling during that time that a proposal was already before the state government.”
“After a series of discussions, the state government formed a core committee which comprises representatives from the KSUM, KMTC, IMA and Kerala University of Health Sciences (KUHS),” said Dr Benaven. According to him, doctors don’t come into startups because they are not aware of it. “However, a lot of younger generation of doctors have shown interest towards startups. It is the need of the future and we need doctors to get into it so that we have a very robust healthcare and med-tech ecosystem,” Benaven said.
Explaining more about the initiative, a KSUM official said, “The functioning of the IEDCs that have been proposed at the medical colleges will be slightly different from those set up in the Engineering and Arts and Science colleges.” The doctors and the medical students will provide the problem statements and data along with the full insights, he said. “However, their team will also have engineering graduates from the nearby colleges to help them out with the technical aspects needed to develop and manufacture the product,” he added.
“The idea and the product will be theirs. The engineering graduates will be just providing them with the necessary technical know-how to develop the product,” said the KSUM official. However, as of now, no details have been released as to when the IEDCs will start functioning in the medical colleges. As a start, workshops and classes will be held at Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam and Kozhikode medical colleges that will see the participation of medical professionals from not only government medical colleges but also private institutions. “The first workshop will be held at Thiruvananthapuram followed by Kozhikode and then Kochi on March 12, 15 and 22, respectively,” he added.
All the regular funding schemes like the innovation grants and seed loans are available for future med-entrepreneurs from the medical colleges, said the KSUM official.
Health-tech mix-up
Aims to attract doctors and medical students into innovation, entrepreneurship in the health-tech and med-tech sectors
Engineering graduates will aid them with the technical aspects needed to develop and manufacture the product