AIIMS Bhubaneswar inked an MoU with the Swami Vivekanand National Institute of Rehabilitation Training and Research (SVNIRTAR), Cuttack, earlier this week for academic, research, and patient care.

Patients from the neurology, neurosurgery, orthopaedics, burn and plastic surgery, paediatrics, and medicine departments at AIIMS Bhubaneswar can be referred to SVNIRTAR for rehabilitation services such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy. Similarly, SVNIRTAR can refer patients for specialised care.

Ashutosh Biswas, executive director of AIIMS Bhubaneswar, stated that two important national institutes will collaborate on patient referral as well as research in specific areas. He also emphasised the importance of expanding rehabilitation care to include other patient categories such as cardiovascular, psychiatric, and cancer patients.

He said the MoU has also aimed to design various short term academic programmes in the form of fellowship, collaborative research, conduct symposia, colloquium, workshops, seminars and conferences on selected topics and areas to train students in both the institutions.

Students from SVNIRTAR are now coming to SCB medical college and hospital in Cuttack for internships and other needs. According to official sources, these students can also come to AIIMS Bhubaneswar for this purpose.

This collaboration seeks to create human resources in the fields of rehabilitation, tertiary prevention, biomedical engineering, and technology. According to official sources, it would aid in the development of academic credit sharing methods under various programmes in accordance with the provisions of the national education policy (NEP) 2020.

“Being India's largest locomotor rehabilitation care, SVNIRTAR has been providing a wide range of rehabilitative care like physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, prosthetics and orthotics. The collaboration will give an opportunity for exposure to acute care at AIIMS Bhubaneswar so that the rehabilitation facility can be programmed and initiated at a very early stage,” said SVNIRTAR director PP Mohanty.

Biswas and Mohanty signed the MoU here to jointly work on several aspects for holistic rehabilitation care.