Integrative medicine departments are to be opened at 19 AIIMS institutes, the Ministry of Ayush has said in a tweet. The move is aimed at ushering in a future of comprehensive and holistic healthcare, successfully progressing towards Integrative Health Services, the tweet said.
The Integrative Health Research scheme is a collaboration between the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences, and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), in addition to the Ministry of Ayush. It is aimed at harnessing the mutual understanding and research environment between different systems of medicine.
By combining the Ayush system with conventional biomedicine and modern technology, a new holistic health care can be created resulting in improved patient outcomes through innovations related to diagnostics and preventive health, as well as treatment methods.
The venture will also seek to identify gaps in knowledge and priority areas where the approach of integrative medicine may have potential, and conduct integrative research in these priority areas to generate robust evidence.
Integrative management protocols will be developed for identified priority diseases based on the evidence. The scheme will provide a maximum budget of ₹6 crore for an initial period of three years, which can be extended up to ₹10 crore for five years.
The integrated healthcare scheme is set to guide health policies and programs in the future. India has an advantage here as it has a rich heritage of indigenous medical knowledge coupled with a robust infrastructure and skilled workforce in contemporary medicine.
