India’s evidence-based healthcare push is set to get a regional boost, with the Department of Health Research (DHR), under the Union Health Ministry, inviting institutions from the Northeast to join its national network of Technical Resource Centres (TRCs).
The move seeks to address the limited representation of institutions from the region in the existing network of 42 TRCs and build local capacity to conduct high-quality systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
The idea is to ensure healthcare guidelines are backed by strong scientific evidence and that researchers from the Northeast have a greater role in shaping them.
The centres will support evidence synthesis for national guideline development. They will also train researchers and healthcare professionals in systematic review methods and the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) approach used to assess the certainty of scientific evidence.
An official from the DHR said the existing TRC network has helped strengthen evidence synthesis across India, but institutions from the Northeast remain under-represented.
The new initiative is therefore designed not just to add more centres but to develop a stronger regional research ecosystem, he explained.
The proposed TRCs will be expected to undertake systematic reviews within defined timelines, assess the quality of available evidence and provide findings that can support national health policy and clinical guidelines.
The centres will also serve as training and mentoring hubs, helping build expertise in evidence synthesis within the region.
For patients, the larger objective is significant. Better evidence can lead to better clinical guidelines, which in turn can support more consistent and effective healthcare decisions.
Institutions will need appropriate infrastructure, human resources and research capabilities. Access to relevant databases is preferred.
Only one TRC will be established in each department of an institution to ensure wider institutional representation and better distribution of resources.
The selected centres will receive financial support of up to Rs 16.5 lakh a year, according to existing norms. Funding will be linked to satisfactory performance and fulfilment of assigned deliverables.
The TRCs will have a clearly defined research and training mandate.
They will prepare detailed technical protocols explaining how systematic reviews and meta-analyses should be conducted — from framing research questions and searching scientific literature to analysing, interpreting and synthesising findings.
Another key responsibility will be to prepare GRADE evidence profiles, showing how certain or reliable the evidence is for different health outcomes. Evidence will be classified as high, moderate, low or very low certainty.
The centres will also be required to complete a specified number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses every year, based on requirements communicated by the Centre for Evidence-Based Guidelines, said the official.
The initiative comes at a time when healthcare decisions increasingly need to be supported by reliable evidence rather than fragmented or anecdotal information.
Systematic reviews bring together findings from multiple studies, while meta-analysis can provide a stronger estimate of an intervention’s effect by combining available data. The GRADE framework then helps policymakers and clinicians understand how much confidence can be placed in that evidence.
For the Northeast, building this capacity locally could have an added advantage. Researchers familiar with the region’s healthcare challenges can contribute evidence that reflects its specific needs while also participating in national guideline development.
The initiative, therefore, is not merely about creating more research centres. It is about bringing the Northeast closer to the centre of India’s evidence-based healthcare movement, said the official.
If implemented effectively, the new TRCs could help turn regional research capacity into national health knowledge — ensuring that scientific evidence informing healthcare decisions is not only stronger but also more geographically representative.
