Medical Research by the Medical Colleges in India

Background: Research conducted in medical colleges in India is often considered to be of poor quality. The study was done to assess the cause for such occurrence. Materials and Methods: Papers published in indexed journals between 1985 to 2017 were reviewed and the data was synthesized. Results: Poor infrastructure, heavy patient load, restricted number of faculties who had limited exposure to research methodologies, private practice, lack of incentive to do good quality research, poor mentoring, lack of research tradition, research fund, ancillary infrastructures, and copy cat research were found to be some of the reasons. Discussions and Solutions: Teachers education, provision of better infrastructure and funding, short term fellowships at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, proper assessment for promotion of teachers, training in research methodology, multicentric research, R & D research bases in medical colleges, looking for solutions for day-to-day challenges through operational and translational mode are some of the solutions. Training from undergraduate levels on elements of research needed to be encouraged.