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The Union ministry of health and family welfare has said that the Budget allocation for the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for health research including new schemes and initiatives have seen an increase of 21% in 2026-27 over the Revised Estimates for 2025-26.
Union minister of state for health and family welfare, Prataprao Jadhav in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, said that the budgetary allocation for the ICMR has increased from Rs. 2,732.13 crore in Budget Estimates 2024–25 to Rs. 3,125.50 crore in Budget Estimates 2025–26 and Rs. 4,000 crore in Budget Estimates 2026–27.
The allocation for 2026–27 represents an increase of approximately 21 per cent over the Revised Estimates for 2025–26 of Rs. 3,150.00 crore.
The government has also undertaken measures to broaden and strengthen the health-research funding ecosystem. ICMR has informed that it has rationalised and expanded its intramural and extramural grants architecture so that funding support is calibrated to the scale, maturity, risk and translational stage of a research proposal. ICMR has initiated new follow-on grants to utilize the leads from the initial research grants.
The current structure includes Small or Anveshan Grants of up to Rs. 2 crore, Intermediate or Nischayak Anveshan Grants ranging from Rs. 2 crore to Rs. 8 crore, the First-in-the-World Challenge with stage-linked support of up to Rs. 8 crore, and Centres for Advanced Research with support of up to Rs. 15 crore.
These instruments support investigator-initiated research, proof-of-concept studies, validation of interventions, high-risk and high-reward innovation, multidisciplinary research and advanced research programmes, said the Minister.
ICMR has further informed that it has initiated various strategic research funding grants to augment and supplement the research budget for public medical colleges and hospitals. This include a top-tier global leadership funding scheme to elevate global ranking of top-ten NIRF-ranked medical institutions as research leaders; and ICMR–National Medical Commission (NMC) Joint Call for strengthening and enhancing quality of medical education by the top-100 NIRF-ranked medical institutions to support innovation and implementation research to enhance quality and outcomes of medical education with a focus on competency-based education, digital learning, and assessment reforms.
Besides, ICMR initiative for strengthening intramural research in three central government Medical Colleges, Delhi; the Mission for Advancement in High-Impact Areas (MAHA)-Medical Technology (MedTech) launched by Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), in collaboration with ICMR and Gates Foundation aiming to accelerate innovation in India’s medical technology sector, reduce reliance on high-cost imports, and promote equitable access to affordable and high-quality medical technologies; and ICMR Clinical Care Excellence Initiative, which are multi-centre clinical trials addressing Non-Communicable Diseases, are some of the other initiatives on strategic research funding grants.
In addition to this, it also has initiated special call for proposals for establishment of ICMR Centre for Advanced Research (CAR) for the Development of Priority Medical Devices and Diagnostic Technologies addressing unmet clinical needs identified by ICMR through extensive stakeholder consultations. The initiative seeks to promote the development of affordable, accessible, and indigenous healthcare technologies of national public health relevance for wider public benefit and long-term self-reliance in the MedTech sector.
The priority medical devices and diagnostic technologies have been identified through a rigorous exercise involving eminent clinicians in different clinical settings across the country including clinicians from tier-1, tier-2 & tier-3 cities, resulting in a curated list of ~100 priority unmet clinical need based medical device/diagnostic technologies.
ICMR’s Multistate Implementation Research Study to improve coverage of high-quality Palliative Care Interventions to develop, implement, and evaluate a scalable palliative care model integrated with healthcare services in India and to evaluate cost-effectiveness and feasibility of the model and generate evidence for national scale-up for palliative care.
ICMR supports several extramural research projects for frontier technologies including development of recombinant vaccines, biologics, cell and gene therapies, Robotics and AI-tools. 22 projects of frontier technology have been undertaken including CAR-T cell therapy & Robotics-based targeted therapy for cancer, cardiac massaging, root canal treatment. ICMR has further supported indigenous development of 97 medical devices/ diagnostic technologies and cost reduction for 11 technologies. Over 60 innovative projects have been supported in First in the World challenge.
With a view to strengthen the domestic biopharmaceutical sector and enhance global competitiveness in biologics and biosimilars, the Government has announced the Biopharma SHAKTI scheme with an outlay of Rs. 10,000 crore over five years with an objective to build a globally competitive domestic ecosystem for biologics and biosimilars to support affordable healthcare in India and enable India to emerge as a global biopharma manufacturing and innovation hub.
Further by supporting research and development, strengthening clinical trial infrastructure and promoting collaboration between academia, research institutions and industry, the Scheme seeks to encourage domestic innovation and manufacturing capabilities in the biopharmaceutical sector. Such initiatives are expected to contribute towards reducing import dependence over time and enhance India’s participation in the global biopharmaceutical market.
The long-term goal is to move toward innovation leadership, including AI-designed biologics and advanced therapies and precision medicine to make these more affordable and accessible, said the Minister.
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