MERIT scheme nears completion

| Updated: Jun 11, 2019, 16:42 IST
HYDERABAD: Taking baby steps in the area of medical research, government medical colleges in the state have started churning out research studies, majority of which are from Gandhi hospital, Osmania General Hospital (OGH) and the Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS). Some of the research projects approved under the (Medical Education Research in Telangana) MERIT scheme introduced in the state two years back are now nearing completion.

The MERIT scheme was launched with the aim of funding medical research projects by faculty and students of the government run medical colleges and encouraging research at the undergraduate level. A total of 78 projects have been approved so far out of the 250 proposals which had come in. Interestingly, a large number of project proposals by faculty members were filtered out.


A sizable chunk of the approved research projects are from medical students. The research projects are categorized under four different categories based on whether they are by undergraduate students, post graduate students or by faculty members. “The projects by undergraduate are most questionnaire based, there are few projects attempting microbiological research on topics of malaria, dengue and obstetrics and chronic kidney disease by post graduate students. There are about 41-44 approved under the two categories, mostly from Gandhi hospital and OGH. Although we have around 30 projects under advanced and task force projects approved. Many of the projects under these two categories have been filtered out. Two different selection committees scrutinize each project. The scientific element in research needs to be guarded,” said Dr Y Manjusha, selection committee member, MERIT.


While expectations from project proposals floated by faculty members is higher in terms of quality, a research training has been given to all principal investigators in


MERIT has now tied up with the Centre for Cellular Mollecular Biology (CCMB), National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), Indian Institute of Chemical Technology and Institute of Bioinformatics Bengaluru.


Download The Times of India News App for Latest Home News.
ReadPost a comment

All Comments ()+

+
All CommentsYour Activity
Sort
Be the first one to review.
We have sent you a verification email. To verify, just follow the link in the message