Best Practice – Promoting Interdisciplinary Research- Towards Clinical Translation

1. Title of Practice:

 Promoting Interdisciplinary Research- Towards Clinical Translation

2. Objectives of Practice:

• Harness the expertise and knowledge of different disciplines to identify innovative areas of research
• Apply the experience of professionals from multiple disciplines to provide practical perspectives on existing challenges.
• Use the available human resources to design and execute research in thrust areas
• Providing research outcomes that are scalable for application.

3. The Context:

Academic research has for long been focused on the preclinical or pre-application stage of scientific knowledge. The changing global health scenario mandates an urgent need for solutions that are innovative, affordable and address the large gap between increasing severity and rising variety of disease conditions and available therapeutic or diagnostic alternatives. The significant cognitive resource of teaching hospitals and academic institutions has been largely uninvolved with ongoing research in the healthcare field. The call of the day both globally and by the leading scientific organizations of the country like ICMR, DBT, DST is for increased collaboration between basic scientists, clinical scientists, and industry to meet the goal of Health for All.

The D Y Patil Education Society Deemed University recognizes the responsibility to contribute to the global and national goals in the area of communicable and non-communicable diseases. To this end, the RICH Cell (Research in Interdisciplinary Research) had been established in 2015, which over the years has evolved and metamorphosed to the Central Research Laboratory (CRL).

The collaboration of clinical and research departments for furtherance of research was embedded in the purpose of the CRL to provide a platform for discussion, collaborative work and innovative research through significant contributions to the field of biomedical research, promotion of student and teacher research, high-quality research publications.

In recent years, the deliberate and focused promotion of interdisciplinary projects has seen increasing collaborations, joint research projects, and high impact factor publications. The emphasis on interdisciplinary research has extended the outcomes to interdisciplinary collaborations both within and outside the university.

The Practice 

1. Training – Medical PG Degree Research Workshop
2. Institutional Research Committee - members
3. Enhancement of Research Infrastructure (equipment, space, staff)
4. Identification of areas of clinical concern or need
5. Dissertations (MD/ MS)
6. Thesis (PhD)
7. University Funded Joint Projects
8. Joint Publications
9. Joint Funding Grant Applications
10. Joint Patents

4. Evidence of Success

1. Joint Dissertations

2. Interdisciplinary PhD – Registered: 83, Awarded: 31

3. Collaborative Trainings

5. Joint Funded Projects: Total Internal projects: 20

9. Unexpected benefits :

A. Improved Patient-care:
Coordination and participation of faculty & staff in the Molecular Biology Lab paid huge dividends during the COVID-19 pandemic. The laboratory was able to work 24x7 as well as share workload and absorb overflow from the nearby Govt Hospital, due to work done by faculty who were used to working together for research projects.

Departments of Microbiology, Pathology were joined by Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine and the Medical Biotechnology Departments for over 16 months of the pandemic.
Newer treatment modalities for wound dressings such as nanopolymer dressings and 3-D printed Skin for Diabetic wounds are provided to patients. Interim observations and have shown improved healing outcomes.

B.Financial benefits to patients
Cost of tests that are done for purpose of diagnosis or prognosis as part of research projects are done against the research funding granted. The benefit to patients in terms of information, treatment or rehabilitation is given, without any financial burden on them.

C. Soft benefits
More interaction between departments that were hitherto used to operating in their individual silo, is visible in the freer and more expansive discussions and communications. This has made for increasing number of interdepartmental and interdisciplinary projects and their outcomes. This has also provided students and faculty with input from different disciplines which has improved even independent research which may not be interdisciplinary.

5. Problems Encountered and Resources Required