A unique centre for excellence in health outcomes research and economics will be set up in Hyderabad by a leading consortia with an investment of ₹10 crore.

The LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), IIM Ahmedabad and the Indian Institute of Public Health (IIPH), Hyderabad, won a Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Clinical/Public Health Research Centre (CRC) grant of ₹10 crore for the purpose.

The inter-disciplinary team of researchers from the three institutes will be advised by an international advisory board of health economists and medical outcomes researchers from Harvard and Stanford University among others.

First of a kind centre

Over the next 5 years, the centre, which will be in the LVPEI campus for now, proposes to create a first of its kind unit of excellence, that will use big data in Indian healthcare along with machine learning and economic tool kits to advance the understanding of evidence-based policy making in Indian healthcare.

The upcoming centre also proposes to recruit world class post doctoral fellows, research assistants and conduct training of doctors to engage in economic evidence-based clinical decision-making, such as cost effectiveness studies with data from India through the Clinical Research Training Programme (CRTP) Fellowships embedded within the CRC grant.

The Centre will be driven by the coordinated leadership of LVPEI’s Raja Narayanan, who will be the Principal Investigator, while Anthony Vipin Das from LVPEI, Chirantan Chatterjee from IIM Ahmedabad and Murthy from IIPH, will be the co-PIs.