Published Jun 23, 2026 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 23, 2026 | 7:00 AM
Hospital beds. (iStock)
Synopsis: A new study has found that India’s private hospitals, despite treating nearly 60 percent of patients, contribute little to medical research. The analysis shows private hospitals without medical colleges publish an average of 48 papers annually, far behind teaching institutions and global peers, highlighting missed opportunities to generate evidence from India’s vast patient population.
Private hospitals treat most Indians, but a new study suggests they contribute little to the country’s medical research output.
Every year, millions of patients walk through the doors of India’s private hospitals. They carry within them one of the most valuable datasets on the planet: a vast, living record of disease, treatment and outcome across 1.4 billion people.
Almost none of it reaches the pages of a medical journal.
A study published in the BMJ Journal of Medical Evidence has put numbers to what many in the field have long suspected. The top 50 private hospitals in India without medical colleges produce an average of 48 research papers a year. According to the authors, the Mayo Clinic in the United States produces 8,000.
One hospital. One year. More research than the authors estimate is produced by India’s private hospital sector.
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The study, authored by surgeons Samiran Nundy and Parmanand Tiwari, compared research output between 2021 and 2025 across private hospitals in India, teaching institutions and leading hospitals in the United States, China and the United Kingdom. The study measures research output through publication counts in major databases including Scopus, PubMed and Google Scholar. It does not evaluate the quality, impact or clinical relevance of individual studies.
The results land hard.
India’s top 50 private hospitals without medical colleges averaged 48 publications a year. Their counterparts attached to medical colleges managed 338. Institutions in China, the US and the UK produced averages of 3,220, 2,898 and 2,701, respectively.
The gap does not narrow at the top. Even among India’s best-performing private hospitals, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi leads with 253 publications annually. Medanta-The Medicity in Gurugram follows with 218, and Apollo Hospitals on Greams Road in Chennai records 186.
These are the outliers. The study found that 99.9 percent of India’s non-teaching hospitals publish fewer than 10 scientific papers per year.
On the teaching side, AIIMS New Delhi dominates with 1,396 publications annually. Christian Medical College, Vellore and JIPMER, Puducherry follow. But even these numbers shrink against global benchmarks. Harvard Medical School averages 3,870 publications a year. Johns Hopkins reaches 3,413.
India now ranks fourth in the world by volume of research publications. That sounds like progress until you look at citations, which measure how much the rest of the world actually reads and builds on that work.
By citations, India drops to ninth.
The authors argue that volume without impact changes nothing. Papers that other researchers do not cite do not shift practice, do not inform policy and do not improve care.
The absence of research carries practical consequences. Treatment protocols, diagnostic pathways and public health policies are often built on evidence generated elsewhere. Without stronger research from Indian hospitals, doctors have less locally generated evidence on how diseases behave in Indian populations.
India’s private hospitals routinely manage tuberculosis, dengue, antimicrobial resistance, diabetes and cardiovascular disease at a scale that hospitals in the US, UK and China rarely encounter. Researchers say such patient volumes create opportunities to generate evidence that could influence global clinical practice.
“In spite of its 1.4 billion population, one lakh doctors, 44,000 hospitals and 800 medical colleges, the research output from this country, which is one of the hallmarks of good medical care, is very low compared with the USA, UK and, surprisingly, China,” the authors write.
The word “surprisingly” carries weight. China’s rise in medical research did not happen by accident. It happened through deliberate policy, financial incentives and institutional pressure to publish. India has built none of those structures in its private sector.
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The study identifies the reasons why private hospitals in India fail to do research
The authors argue that many private hospitals prioritise clinical activity and revenue generation over academic work, leaving little institutional incentive for research. In that commercial logic, a busy outpatient department beats a research department every time.
Hospital administrators and health policy experts may argue that publication counts alone do not capture quality of care. They may also point to structural constraints, including limited research funding, high patient volumes, regulatory burdens and a shortage of dedicated research staff compared with institutions in the US, UK and China.
The study acknowledges these pressures but argues they do not fully explain the gap.
Doctors working in private hospitals have no incentive to publish. They receive no protected time, no financial reward and no career advancement through research. In the government sector, promotions depend on seniority rather than publications. The result is the same: research does not pay.
“In the private sector, it is generally thought to be a waste of time and money,” the authors write.
The infrastructure fails too. Few private hospitals in India run electronic medical record systems that cover their patient population. Without records, there is no data. Without data, there is no research. Patients arrive, receive treatment and leave no trace in the scientific literature.
The authors also argue that India’s education system continues to reward memorisation more than scientific inquiry. Postgraduate theses, which could feed the research pipeline, mostly gather dust. Students compile them at the end of their training, often plagiarise and rarely publish. The knowledge disappears.
The consequences extend beyond rankings and journal counts.
The study cites evidence that institutions which produce high-quality research also deliver better patient care. The two activities reinforce each other. Research sharpens clinical thinking. Clinical experience generates research questions. Hospitals that do neither remain static.
India’s private hospitals treat the majority of the country’s patients. They see conditions that hospitals in the US, UK and China will never encounter at scale. All of it passes through their doors and leaves no record in the scientific literature.
“There is a neglect of the enormous data that can be accessed from Indian patients,” the authors write.
That neglect compounds. Every year without research is a year without the evidence base that makes medicine better.
The study does not stop at diagnosis. It pushes toward a prescription.
The authors call on medium and large-sized private hospitals to establish formal academic programmes, including Diplomate of National Board courses, and to build partnerships with universities. They want hospitals to introduce financial incentives for clinicians who research and publish.
They push for wider adoption of electronic medical records, arguing that without a functioning data infrastructure, research remains impossible regardless of intent.
They stop short of recommending protected academic time, noting that in a country where clinical demand runs high and resources run thin, patient care cannot take second place. They point out that much of the best research in history came from the busiest clinicians.
The broader argument is structural. Private hospitals must stop treating research as a distraction and start understanding it as something that builds institutional reputation, improves clinical outcomes, and, over time, attracts patients.
“Publication enhances institute branding as well as clinical excellence,” the authors write. “Hospital administrators should realise that instead of focusing on revenue and patient numbers.”
India’s private hospitals see more patients. They see different patients. They see patients the rest of the world does not.
“We therefore recommend that private hospitals in India with and without medical colleges must evolve into academic healthcare systems,” the authors conclude. “This will result in quality improvement, better patient outcomes, and the institution will acquire a national and perhaps a global reputation.”
Every day, India’s private hospitals generate millions of clinical encounters. Most disappear once the patient leaves the ward. The study’s central argument is that until those experiences are systematically recorded, analysed and published, India will continue treating patients without fully learning from them.
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
