Original Article
The research output from Indian medical institutions between 2005 and 2014

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmrp.2016.04.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

The research output from Indian medical institutions is generally regarded to be poor but there have been no previous studies to document this especially after the recent proliferation of 263 medical colleges, mainly in the private sector and under the aegis of the National Board of Examinations, as well as the 316, mainly public sector, colleges under the Medical Council of India.

Methods

Using the SCOPUS database we analyzed the research output from 579 Indian medical institutions and hospitals between 2005 and 2014, including the contributions of individual states and compared the output of Indian medical institutions with some of the leading academic centers in the world.

Results

Only 25 (4.3%) of the institutions produced more than 100 papers a year but their contribution was 40.3% of the country's total research output. 332 (57.3%) of the medical colleges did not have a single publication during this period. The states which had the largest number of private medical colleges fared the worst with more than 90% of the medical colleges in Karnataka and Kerala having no publication at all. In comparison, the annual research output of the Massachusetts General Hospital was 4600 and the Mayo Clinic 3700.

Conclusion

The overall research output from Indian medical institutions is poor. This may be because medical education has now become a business and there is little interest in research which is not thought to be a profitable activity. We believe that a drastic overhaul of Indian medical education is necessary similar to that initiated by Flexner in the USA in the beginning of the last century.

Section snippets

Background

Assuring a minimal level of healthcare to the expanding population of India has become a major issue over the last decade. Although there has been an overall improvement of medical resources and healthcare since independence, the distribution of these has been very uneven, with the rich having access to a burgeoning and unregulated private sector dominated by the corporate, for-profit hospitals and the poor left to go to underfunded, overcrowded, and inefficient public institutions.1 There is a

Methods

We counted the total number of documents (including original articles, reviews, case reports, and reports of conferences and symposia) published by an individual institute over a period of 10 years (2005–2014). For those established after 2005, we evaluated the number of publications from the year of establishment to 2014. The MCI and NBE institutes were listed in separate league tables.23

We ranked them as follows:

  • Compiled a list of top 25 institutes under the MCI (Fig. 1) and the NBE (Fig. 2)

Results

There are a total of 579 medical institutes in the government and private sectors. 316 institutes were under the MCI and 263 under the NBE. Their total research output during the period 2005–2014 was 101,034 papers, with the average number of publications per institution being 14.5 papers per year.

However, there were 332 (57.3%) institutions that did not publish a single paper during this 10-year period, which included 162 (51.2%) under the MCI and 170 (64.6%) under the NBE.

Fig. 1 shows the

Discussion

Our findings suggest that the research output of Indian medical institutes is generally poor, with 57% of them not having a single publication included in the Scopus database between 2005 and 2014, and only 25 (4.3%) institutes (out of 579 that are affiliated to the MCI and NBE) producing more than 100 papers a year. We also found that most of the southern states that have the largest number of private medical colleges produce very little in the way of research publication and finally that even

Conclusion

We have found the overall research output from the medical institutions of India to be low, with the majority of publications from only 10 selected institutions. Nearly 60% of them had not had a single publication included in the Scopus database in the last 10 years.

The reasons are mainly a lack of interest in research and publication, as well as lack of incentives.

We believe our system needs a radical overhaul similar to what happened in the USA after the publication of the Flexner Report.

Conflicts of interest

The authors have none to declare.

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