PGI Chandigarh to sign MoU with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve patients' convenience

Chandigarh: The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh is likely to sign an agreement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve the patients’ convenience, the premier public health institute's director Professor Vivek Lal said on Saturday. 

“Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Hari Menon (who leads the India office of the foundation) has been so happy to see our patient-centric approach that he wants to use technology to improve patient convenience in PGI here,” Professor Lal told a news conference here.

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He said they want to use the PGI as a pilot hospital in India.

“We will be the first hospital to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), if it happens, with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve patient convenience,” he added.

Professor Lal informed that an app may be created which will also guide the patients once the MoU is signed.

“The particular app will tell a patient when he can go to other department, whom he is going to meet there and who will be waiting for him. That digital technology, that kind of an app they are creating,” he said.

Stating that around 30 lakh patients came to the PGI last year, Professor Lal claimed there is no hospital in the world which has infrastructure to tackle such a huge footfall.

The PGI somehow is managing it, he added.

Giving details on ground-breaking therapies being implemented in the PGIMER, Professor Pankaj Malhotra, Head, Department of Clinical Haematology, said: “The Department of Clinical Hematology and Medical Oncology at PGI Chandigarh has achieved significant success with a ground-breaking cancer treatment known as Chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR T) cell therapy during a clinical trial.” “This innovative therapy was initially administered to a patient diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia on March 14 2023, followed by additional cases involving lymphoma and another leukemia patient. Encouragingly, all three patients have shown positive progress following the treatment,” he added.

Professor Malhotra said the PGI is the “first public hospital in India to successfully implement this ground-breaking therapy”.

The CAR-T cell therapy cost in the United States is anywhere between Rs 5 crore to 6 crore, he said, adding the cost initially here will be more than Rs 50 lakh but it is expected to come down in the near future.

Meanwhile, Professor Lal said the organ transplant programme in the PGIMER is one of the most prolific one with 4,800 renal transplant surgeries done so far.

With the Department of Urology also doing renal transplants along with Renal Transplant Surgery, the waiting period for live renal transplant has substantially reduced from earlier 12-14 months to 2 months, helping in the mitigation of the suffering of the patients, he said, adding this is a huge step forward.

“Even the organ transplant programme for pancreas, liver and heart has picked up good pace with successful outcomes, reducing the waiting period for the patients,” Professor Lal said.

“Adding to this, another milestone accomplished in the transplant programme is the successful living donor liver transplant (LDLT) on a 46-year-old male patient from Uttar Pradesh on August 7 this year,” he added.

Professor Lal said the PGI has also recently started a pediatric bone marrow transplant service.

Six beds have been approved exclusively for paediatrics, he added.

Adult bone marrow transplant services under Prof Pankaj Malhotra and Prof Alka Khadwal will handhold the paediatric bone marrow transplant services, he said, adding this will help in reducing the waiting period for children.

Professor Lal said out of 520 transplants done till date, 84 were for children.

“With these dedicated beds, we will be able to cater to more children needing bone marrow transplants further reducing the waiting period,” he added.

Professor Lal said another major step forward by the PGIMER is the expansion of Paediatric Cardiology under Dr Rohit Manoj.

“We plan to have 10 dedicated beds and 2 dedicated OTs for the same. The basic intent is to reduce the waiting list and assuage the pain of the patients, especially children,” he added.

Endorsing the need to create independent departments to further the impetus on patient care, Professor Lal said: “We will be soon creating a few independent departments out of parent departments.”

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