All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) (created 1956) is a medical college and hospital in India, and is an autonomous institution funded by India's Union Government. It is located in Delhi.

It is considered as the best medical college and public hospital in the country and is globally recognised for providing low-cost medical care to a large number of patients.Most of India's VIPs (Legislators, Ministers, Judges in particular) utilize AIIMS as their primary hospital, which contributes to ensuring the maintenance of high standards.Recently, medical professionals from various Asian, European and American countries have begun coming to AIIMS to train, as the exposure to various diseases attained there is rare in most other institutions.

It is one of India's Institutes of National Importance, a distinguished category of premier institutions like the IITs, IIMs, Indian Statistical Institute, ICAR etc.

AIIMS was inaugurated in 1956, and was built with a grant from the New Zealand Government. AIIMS was established in New Delhi after former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's intitial proposal to set up the institute in Calcutta was turned down by the then Chief Minister of West Bengal Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy.It was the vision of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, the first Health Minister of India, to establish an institute of such nature in India. She envisioned an autonomous medical institute where students, doctors and teachers would live and learn side by side, with freedom to experiment with teaching and curriculum.

AIIMS has been consistently ranked the top medical college in India to pursue an MBBS degree by India Today in annual surveys starting in 1997.AIIMS has held the top slot for the last six years in a row, and has been ranked first for 11 out of the 12 years that India Today has conducted the survey.

AIIMS excellence has to do with several factors - small class size (50 per year), excellent library facilities, liberal clinically oriented teaching, research exposure and the ability to set its own curriculum.

Several surveys by The Week and Outlook magazines have named AIIMS the best hospital in India overall, as well as the best in several individual fields such as Cardiology, Neurology, Gastroenterology, Gynaecology and Ophthalmology, ahead of several specialised institutions.

The hospital has been able to maintain high standards of quality while seeing large numbers of patients (3.5 million in 2006) at very low cost to patients (10 Indian Rupees for outpatient doctor consultation equivalent to approx US $0.25), many of whom live in extreme poverty.

Objectives of AIIMS

Functions of AIIMS

Hospital Services

Average bed occupancy     :           82.4%

Average period of hospital stay :   5.4 days

Net death rate       :                          3.0%

Infection rate (crude)  :                     8.48%

Departments

• Anaesthesiology
• Anatomy
• Biochemistry
• Biomedical Engineering
• Biophysics
• Biostatistics
• Biotechnology
• Cardiology
• Centre for Community Medicine
• College of Nursing
• Dermatology & Venereology
• Endocrinology, Metabolism & Diabetes
• Forensic Medicine
• Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition
• Gastrointestinal Surgery
• Haematology
• Hospital Administration
• Laboratory Medicine
• Medicine
• Microbiology
• Nephrology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Orthopaedics
• Otorhinolaryngology
• Paediatrics
• Paediatric Surgery
• Pathology
• Pharmacology
• Physiology
• Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
• Psychiatry
• Radio Diagnosis
• Reproductive Biology
• Surgical Disciplines
• Transplant Immunology & Immunogenetics
• Transfusion Medicine (Blood Bank)
• Urology

Specialty Centers

• Cardio-Thoracic Sciences Centre
• Centre for Dental Education and Research
• Neurosciences Centre
• Dr. R.P Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences
• Dr. B.R.A Institute-Rotary Cancer Hospital
• National Drug Dependence Treatment Center
• Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Center

• Mitral Valve Replacement
• Aortic Valve Replacement
• Open Mitral Commisurotomy
• Mitral Valve Repair
• Homograft Aortic Valve Replacement
• Ross Procedure
• Cosmetic Cardiac Surgery
• Right Thorocotomy
• Coronary Bypass Surgery
• Congenital Heart Surgery
• Common birth defects