Some of India’s premier health and research institutions have teamed up with the Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS) to develop solutions for the medical challenges faced by Indian soldiers.
The institutions that are working with the AFMS include All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institute of Science, Indian Council of Medical Research and the Defence Research and Development Organisation.
The collaborations span military trauma, aerospace medicine, infectious diseases, digital health, AI-enabled diagnostics, combat casualty care, robotic surgery, wearable technologies, battlefield telemedicine, next-generation sequencing and prosthetics and bionics.
The ministry of defence said this in its response to a letter written by Rajya Sabha member Ajeet Madhavrao Gopchade, who urged the government to significantly expand defence-oriented medical research within the AFMS and Armed Medical Corps.
The initiative is aimed at developing medical technologies and solutions tailored to the operational requirements of the armed forces, including India’s climatic conditions, battlefield environments and the physiological characteristics of its military personnel. The approach has similarities with the US model of integrating advanced research with defence requirements, including through the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Gopchade called for research specifically tailored to Indian climatic conditions, operational realities and the physiological patterns of Indian military personnel. “It is respectfully submitted that several advanced nations have increasingly treated military medical research as a strategic defence capability directly integrated with operational planning,” he wrote in the letter addressed to the Prime Minister.
He pointed to the work of the US Army Medical Research and Development Command on chemical warfare defence, blast effects and traumatic brain injury protection, combat casualty innovation and neurological resilience under battlefield conditions. He also cited the UK’s military health framework and Canada’s military medical research programmes in the letter.
ET has seen copies of his letter and the ministry’s response.
In its response, written by a senior official in the Ministry of Defence, the government said there were collaborations among top institutions focused on the specific medical care needs of soldiers.
The AFMS, which is collaborating with these institutions, is undertaking multiple strategic defence-oriented medical research projects aimed at finding solutions to the medical challenges faced by armed forces personnel.
