The Hindu Business Line : IIT Madras to start 2 new courses in July

Chennai, March 13 IIT Madras, in association with Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, and Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST), will start two courses this July — an M. Tech in Clinical Engineering and Ph. D. with major in biomedical devices and technology.

Dr G.K. Suraishkumar, Professor and Head of Biotechnology department, IIT Madras, said the courses were launched in keeping with the fact that healthcare delivery was becoming very technology driven.

“As hospitals seek accreditation, it will be mandatory for them to hire at least one clinical engineer,” he said at a press conference. There are about 16,000 hospitals in India. Currently, hospitals hire biomedical engineers for lack of qualified clinical engineers.

These employees some times double up as equipment maintenance personnel. A clinical engineer on the other hand is not a “maintenance person” and must be equipped with scientific, management, engineering and clinical skills.

He must be have knowledge of equipment and inventory management, training users and healthcare technology assessment,” Dr Suraishkumar explained.

The new M.Tech course is designed in a way to maximise exposure to all these areas.

Students will spend one semester at IIT Madras learning necessary fundamentals of engineering and two semesters each at CMC Vellore (relevant fundamentals of medicine) and SCTIMST (medical devices and equipment).

This will be followed by a year-long internship at either CMC or SCTIMST.

The course also gives scope for students to develop their ideas into a business proposition and start their own enterprise.

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