Draft national health research policy proposes overhaul of India’s research ecosystem

The Centre has released a draft National Health Research Policy 2026 that seeks to align the country’s scientific research more closely with its disease burden and public health priorities, proposing a wide-ranging restructuring of India’s health research ecosystem with a sharper focus on indigenous innovation, evidence-based policymaking, and measurable outcomes.

Prepared by the Department of Health Research, the draft is the first attempt at a unified national framework spanning biomedical science, clinical medicine, public health, epidemiology, digital health, health systems, behavioural sciences and emerging technologies.

The Ministry has invited stakeholder feedback before the policy is finalised. It aims to address long-standing problems, including fragmented research efforts, wide regional disparities in research capacity, and the slow translation of scientific findings into actual healthcare delivery and policy.

While India has built considerable scientific capability through institutions such as the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), universities, medical colleges and other research bodies, the policy points out that this capability remains concentrated in a handful of institutions and States. Research priorities, it notes, do not always track the country’s real disease burden, health-system gaps, equity concerns or its preparedness for future public health emergencies. Administrative and regulatory delays, it adds, continue to slow down research even when funding is not the constraint.

Among the key proposals is a system for periodically identifying priority research areas, based on disease burden, scientific opportunity, equity, pandemic preparedness and strategic national interest — an agenda to be drawn up in consultation with States, Union Territories, researchers, health professionals, patients and community representatives.

The draft also lays out a three-tier governance structure: a National Health Research Stewardship Committee for overall strategic coordination, the Department of Health Research as the nodal implementing agency, and the ICMR as the scientific and technical lead. States, in turn, will be expected to weave research more tightly into local health programmes and service delivery.

Acknowledging that research quality ultimately rests on institutional capacity, the policy calls for expanding research infrastructure, strengthening the scientific workforce, cutting down administrative and regulatory bottlenecks, and encouraging collaboration among public institutions, academia, industry and non-profit organisations, along with wider access to shared research facilities. Ethics, research integrity, data governance, cybersecurity and community participation have been placed at the core of this framework.

The policy also signals a shift in how research performance itself will be judged. Instead of leaning mainly on publications, citations and patents, it proposes assessing research by its contribution to policy, clinical practice, indigenous technologies, health programmes, institutional capacity, equity and wider societal impact. Long-term national targets have also been proposed for research investment, medical science PhDs, publications, patents and approved indigenous health technologies.