Bhubaneswar: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has initiated the National Health Research Priority Project to enhance emergency care systems, focusing on the immediate treatment of patients experiencing heart attacks or brain strokes, officials said on Wednesday.
The project will initially launch as a pilot in five locations- Puri (Odisha), Ludhiana (Punjab), Vidisha (Madhya Pradesh), Vadodara (Gujarat), and Pondicherry.

According to a PTI report, a three-day national consultation conference, involving the stakeholders, was held at AIIMS-Bhubaneswar to fix the modalities of the project, officials said.
The project work was formally launched in Puri from the conference that concluded on Tuesday.
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While ICMR will fund the project, AIIMS-Bhubaneswar will provide technical support and the state government will take care of the logistics and manpower.
The project is aimed at enhancing emergency care by improving logistics, boosting healthcare provider competencies, integrating IT and AI tools, and mapping facilities, AIIMS-Bhubaneswar Executive Director Doctor Ashutosh Biswas said, news agency PTI reported.
The key components of the project include improving ambulance services, increasing community demand, and training first-level responders, he said.
“The project will address seven critical emergencies — heart attack, brain stroke, trauma, snake bite, poisoning, respiratory emergencies, and neonatal and maternal emergencies,” he added.
A research team, led by AIIMS-Bhubaneswar additional professor doctor Arvind Kumar Singh, has been formed to develop and implement this model in collaboration with the state government, officials said.
team had earlier reported that the apex medical research regulator, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has released 32 new Standard Treatment Workflows (STWs) for common and serious diseases. It is developed in collaboration with the National Health Authority (NHA) and WHO India. The new STWs cover five specialties, including cardiothoracic vascular surgery, paediatric cardiology, interventional radiology, neurosurgery, and orthopaedics, adding to the 125 STWs previously released across 23 specialities in 2019 and 2022.
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