ICMR Picks Seven Institutions, From IIT Madras to Amrita, to Build India's Priority Medical Devices and Diagnostics

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has chosen seven academic institutions to host Centres for Advanced Research (CAR) for the development of priority medical devices and diagnostic technologies. The selection was reported on 16 October 2026. The seven are IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, IISc Bengaluru and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Coimbatore).

The programme targets one of the most persistent gaps in Indian healthcare. India makes generic medicines for the world, but it still imports most of its medical devices, especially the higher-end diagnostic and therapeutic equipment used in hospitals.

The seven centres and what they will build

According to reports of the selection, each centre has a named lead and a specific focus:

• IIT Bombay, led by Dr Abhijit Majumder, will develop point-of-care diagnostic tools for primary healthcare, meaning tests that can be run at a health and wellness centre or a clinic instead of a central laboratory.
• IIT Kharagpur will host PRAGATICAR, led by Prof Suman Chakraborty, whose group is known for microfluidics and low-cost diagnostics.
• IIT Delhi will host CAR-PATH, led by Prof Vivekanandan Perumal.
• IIT Kanpur, led by Prof Amitabha Bandyopadhyay, has committed to work on ten priority products.
• IIT Madras will host TARaNGaM, led by Prof Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam, who also heads the institute's Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre.
• Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, led by Prof Gopal S Pillai, will focus on technologies for eye and vascular diseases.
• IISc Bengaluru will work on biomaterials, implants and translational devices.

How the programme is designed

ICMR's call for proposals set out the model. Each centre can receive up to ₹15 crore over five years. The work is tied to a list of roughly 100 unmet clinical needs that ICMR published with the call. This is a deliberate change from the usual academic grant. Instead of researchers proposing whatever interests them, ICMR has identified gaps that clinicians and the public health system face, such as a diagnostic that is too expensive, a device that has to be imported or a test that needs a lab the patient cannot reach, and has asked institutions to build products against them.

The centres are expected to take technologies further along the path to products, through prototyping and validation, and to work towards the clinical evidence and regulatory steps that a device needs before a manufacturer can license it. That is where most academic medical-device projects in India have stalled: a working lab prototype rarely becomes a certified product on a hospital shelf.

Building on earlier efforts

This is not ICMR's first attempt to tie IITs to medical technology. In 2022, ICMR and the Department of Health Research set up ICMR-DHR Centres of Excellence at seven IITs to develop products for the National Health Mission, Ayushman Bharat and public health programmes. The new CAR model brings in IISc and Amrita and links funding explicitly to a list of priority needs. The 2022 initiative's results have not been comprehensively reported, so the new programme's design may reflect lessons from it.

The CAR programme also sits next to other recent government moves in medtech. These include the Promotion of Research and Innovation in Pharma MedTech (PRIP) scheme, which recently backed pharma and medtech projects, and medical-device parks in several states.

Why it matters

Medical devices have a peculiar economics in India. The market is large and growing, but it is dominated by imports. For many high-value categories, such as imaging equipment and advanced diagnostics, most units in use are made abroad. That raises costs for patients and hospitals, leaves supply exposed to disruptions of the kind seen during the pandemic, and means devices are often designed for wealthier health systems instead of the conditions of an Indian district hospital or rural clinic.

Products designed in India for Indian conditions, such as cheaper point-of-care tests, rugged devices that tolerate unstable power and implants sized and priced for Indian patients, could close that gap. They could also find markets in other countries with similar health-system constraints across Asia and Africa.

The institutions chosen have track records. IIT Madras's healthcare technology work has already produced devices that reached the market through start-ups. IIT Kharagpur's microfluidics research has produced low-cost diagnostic platforms. Amrita has deep clinical links through its hospital network. Combining engineering schools with clinical partners is essential, because medical devices fail more often from poor fit with clinical workflow than from bad engineering.

Caveats

So far the selection has been reported mainly by health-sector trade and news sites. No detailed ICMR or PIB press release listing budgets per centre has been found. The ₹15 crore ceiling comes from ICMR's call document, and actual sanctioned amounts may differ. Five years and up to ₹15 crore per centre is also modest next to what it costs to take a device through clinical trials and certification, so the programme's success will depend on whether industry partners and start-ups pick up the technologies these centres produce.

Sources

• ICMR — Special call for proposals: Centre for Advanced Research for priority medical devices and diagnostic technologies
• The Indian Practitioner — ICMR selects seven Indian institutions to develop medical devices and diagnostic technologies
• MedGate Today — ICMR selects seven research centres to develop priority medical devices and diagnostic technologies
• Omnicuris — Priority medical devices: ICMR centres
• DistilINFO — ICMR launches CAR initiative for indigenous medtech
• Careers360 — Centres of excellence unveiled at 7 IITs for fostering MedTech innovations (2022)