Under its Industry Innovation Programme on Medical Electronics (IIPME), the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) has invited proposals from innovators, start-ups, SMEs and large Indian companies individually or in partnership/consortia mode for development and deployment of indigenously developed medical electronic devices in healthcare centres across country.

The focus area of the programme will be on imaging and navigation, technologies for chronic diseases, convergence of medical device and bioinformatics and increasing the outreach through medical electronics.

Under this programme, BIRAC will support cutting edge technologies in multidisciplinary areas of medical technologies ranging from handheld point of care devices to large equipments, wearable gadgets to outreach devices, and from health tracking devices to RADAR technology based ultrasound machines.

Earlier, BIRAC had launched this programme in partnership with the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) to promote and foster cutting edge technologies in the multidisciplinary areas of medical electronics.

BIRAC through its various flagship schemes is making significant investments in the medical devices sector and hence promoting the R&D of medical devices. BIRAC has supported more than 100 industries of medical fraternity and is supporting many ideas of young individual researchers, SME and large companies.

DeitY is already supporting the entire value chain of electronics R&D activities in the country ranging from the basic components to sophisticated product development. These include development and deployment of indigenously developed medical electronic devices in healthcare centres across country.

The call for proposals will remain open till 10th March 2017 and applicants will be able to submit the LoI anytime during this period. The submitted LoI will be evaluated three times during this period with evaluation cycle starting from 10th July 2016, 10th Nov 2016 & 10th March 2017.


Medical electronics is a branch of electronics that deals with design, implementation and use of electrical devices and equipment for medical purposes such as research, examination, diagnosis, treatment, assistance and care. Medical electronics utilizes field disciplines of both electronics and biomedical. Portable biomedical electronic devices are essential to move medical products from the hospital atmosphere to home, and to move medical examination from the laboratory and offer one- touch access to users. These devices offer secure access and enable both patients and doctors to stay in touch with each other remotely. The IIPME will be one of its kinds, which will directly target the innovations in the medical electronics start-ups, SMEs and large enterprises and will also help in generating the ideas to keep ready the pipeline of new unmet medical innovations.