The state of medical research in India is very poor. Nearly 60 per cent of institutes do not have a single publication over a decade. Moreover, states that have the largest number of private medical colleges produce very little of research publication. This was revealed in a study on the research output of all institutions in India during 2005-14 using Scopus, the largest database of peerreviewed literature. According to the study published in
‘Current Medicine Research and Practice’, only 25 (4.3 per cent) of the institutions produced more than 100 papers a year and these accounted for 40.3 per cent of the country’s total research output. Over 57 per cent or 332 of the medical colleges did not have a single publication during this
period while over 90 per cent of NBE-affiliated colleges in Karnataka and Kerala had none. The annual research output of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Mayo Clinic in the US was over 4,600 and 3,700 respectively. Even the most prolific research institution in India, AIIMS, published less than a third of these numbers. The top 10 medical institutes under MCI were AIIMS, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research
in Chandigarh, Christian Medical College in Vellore, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow, King George Medical College in Lucknow, Kasturba Medical College in Manipal, Tata Memorial Centre in Mumbai, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, Institute of Medical Sciences of Banaras Hindu University, and Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi. These accounted for 40.8
per cent of the research output from the 579 medical institutions. The top 25 institutes under NBE, all private, contributed just 5.6 per cent. China, which was at India’s level 10 years ago, has emerged as the fifth leading nation in terms of its share of the world’s scientific publications. The policy of increasing the number of doctors by liberally allowing the creation of new medical institutions, mainly through private funding and enhancing seats has not been an unqualified success with what is generally perceived as a fall in standards of medical education, “which has now become a business venture for many politicians and is accompanied by widespread corruption both in its entry and exit processes”, the study said, while calling for an
overhaul of the medical education system.