AIIMS Patna Incubation and Innovation Council (APIIC)

Choosing the right route

APIIC has two standing doors and one dated one. Pick Pre-Incubation if you have a healthcare idea that still needs validating and you want clinician feedback and workspace before you commit. Pick Incubation if you already have a prototype and your next milestone is clinical validation. The Ignition Grant is not a standing form: it goes out as a dated call, usually paired with an incubation call, so watch the Available Programs page and the notices on the APIIC home page for the next one.

You do not have to work at AIIMS Patna. The published incubatee and grantee lists include outside companies as well as AIIMS faculty. But the work does have to be healthcare, and it helps to say which of APIIC's thrust areas you sit in: surgical instruments and equipment, AI, machine learning or robotics in healthcare, medical devices and diagnostic kits, community health, natural products and Ayurveda, or medical and biotech product development.

How applications work

Fill the form on the APIIC website. Applications can also be sent by email or post if that is easier.

• The pre-incubation form asks for your background, qualification, the innovation title and description, how long you need to reach a prototype, the space and equipment you want, whether you need clinical samples or biosafety clearance, and whether you are already with another incubator. Company registration details are optional, and there is a flag for student applicants.
• The incubation form is a company form. It asks for registration number, date and authority, partnership and shareholding structure, income tax return status, the problem you address, your solution, product detail, target customer, business plan, go-to-market strategy, revenue model, competitors, a SWOT, funding history, your technology category and patent position, and the infrastructure and mentors you need.

Have the patent section ready before you start. It asks whether the technology can be patented, whether you have done a patent search, whether you have applied and with what application number, and whether you need any other protection such as a trademark or copyright.

How selection works

Seven steps, and they are published in order. An internal committee screens applications. Shortlisted applicants pitch to a technical committee using slides APIIC sends out. Selected applicants sign an MoU, an NDA and a conflict-of-interest declaration, with terms varying case by case. Then come facility orientation and a safety briefing, implementation of the plan, and periodic progress reviews. The arrangement ends in either continued incubation or a formal exit once the product is validated, compliant and commercialised.

What reviewers look for

The stated screening criteria are the innovative component, intellectual property, technology content, market potential, and the profile of the team or the individual. Progress is later judged against technology readiness levels, so framing your application around where you are on that ladder and what the next level requires will read well.

Because everything runs inside a hospital, compliance is not an afterthought. Anything involving patients, their data or biological samples needs ethics approval, and all on-site work follows hospital safety, biosafety and data privacy procedures. Say up front whether you will need clinical samples or biosafety clearance. Expect intellectual property ownership and licensing to be settled in writing before collaborative development starts, and expect AI-based tools to be held to responsible AI guidelines and medical device standards.

Before you apply

Charges for facility access are not published yet, so ask. APIIC has also not published an equity policy either way, so confirm what the MoU will say about ownership before you sign. General enquiries go to info@apiic.org, and visits to the centre need a prior appointment.

AIIMS Patna Incubation and Innovation Council, known as APIIC, is the incubation centre of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna. It is funded under the NIDHI Inclusive Technology Business Incubator (i-TBI) programme of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, and works only on medical and healthcare innovation. It sits in the Old Building of the AIIMS Residential Campus at Hydraulic Khagaul, Patna, and runs its own website at apiic.org, separate from the hospital's institutional site.

APIIC describes what it does plainly: it helps founders take affordable medical devices, digital health tools, biomedical technologies and new models of patient care from an idea to something a hospital can use. What it offers that a general incubator cannot is the hospital itself. Incubatees get access to AIIMS Patna's clinical ecosystem for validation and trials, to its Microbiology and Biochemistry departments for testing, and to clinicians who can tell them early whether a device fits a real ward workflow.

How programmes work

There are two standing ways in and one dated grant call. Pre-Incubation is for an early concept that still needs validating, and comes with clinician feedback, early prototype support and workspace to develop the idea into a minimum viable product. Incubation is for teams that already have a prototype and are preparing for clinical validation, and comes with lab access, deeper mentoring, industry networking and funding connections. Both application forms sit permanently open on the APIIC website.

Alongside these, APIIC runs the Ignition Grant, which goes out as a dated call rather than a rolling form. The second call, for incubation and the Ignition Grant together, ran during 2026 and has closed. A further call is flagged on the site as coming soon.

Selection follows the same seven steps for every route. You apply using the form on the APIIC website, and applications can also be sent by email or post. An internal committee screens on the innovative component, intellectual property, technology content, market potential and the profile of the team or individual. Shortlisted applicants pitch to a technical committee using slides APIIC sends them. Selected applicants sign an MoU, a non-disclosure agreement and a conflict-of-interest declaration, complete a facility orientation and safety briefing, and then start work. Progress is reviewed periodically against technology readiness levels, and the arrangement ends either in continued incubation or in an exit once validation, regulatory compliance and commercialisation are done.

Who can apply

Both outside founders and AIIMS Patna's own clinicians. The published lists make this unusually clear for a medical institute. Six named companies appear as incubatees, and ten names appear as Ignition Grant recipients, seven of them private companies and three of them AIIMS Patna faculty working on their own innovations. The pre-incubation form has a flag for student applicants and asks for company registration details only if you have them, so an individual with an idea is in scope; the incubation form asks for shareholding, registration and business-plan detail, so it is aimed at a formed or forming company.

The work has to be healthcare. APIIC names its thrust areas as surgical instruments and equipment, AI, machine learning and robotics in healthcare, medical devices and diagnostic kits, community health innovation, natural products and Ayurveda, and product development across the medical, healthcare and biotech sectors.

Anything done on site runs under hospital rules. APIIC requires adherence to hospital safety, biosafety and data privacy procedures, ethics approval for any study involving patients, data or biological samples, defined intellectual property ownership and licensing for collaborative work, and compliance with responsible AI guidelines and medical device standards.

Facilities

APIIC lists incubation units and co-working areas with meeting rooms and office support; wet labs with benches, sinks, fume hood access through partner labs and cold storage; prototyping bays with ESD-protected electronics benches, component storage, 3D printing and access to partner machining; a design and development room and fab lab; and AV-enabled meeting and training rooms with a seminar hall and mentoring pods, which cohort startups book through a shared calendar.

Its named instruments are a 3D printer, a CO2 laser cutter, a CNC router, an etching machine for microfluidics and PCB work, an RT-PCR system, an automated ELISA plate reader, a convertible freezer and refrigerator, a deep freezer, an inverted microscope with phase contrast and fluorescence, a laser engraver and a PCB prototyping station. Charges for facility access have not been published; that page says only that it is coming.

Who runs it

Prof. (Brig.) Dr. Raju Agarwal, Executive Director and CEO of AIIMS Patna, chairs and directs APIIC. Dr. Kranti Bhavana, Professor and Head of ENT, is Principal Investigator and Dr. Anil Kumar, Professor and Head of Trauma and Emergency, is Co-Principal Investigator. Dr. Mousumi Saha is Chief Executive Officer, with Mr. Vivek Kumar as Incubation Manager and Dr. Aliya Firdaus as Incubation Associate. The governing board also includes officials from the Department of Science and Technology, the Bihar Industry Association, King's College London, the Incubation Centre at IIT Patna and InnoIPS, and a separate advisory panel adds mentors from NRDC, DST and AIIMS Patna's own faculty.

A note on names

APIIC is not the same as the AIIMS Patna - BFI Incubation Centre, or APBFI. They are two separate centres on the same campus, listed separately by AIIMS Patna, and they signed a Letter of Intent with each other on 5 September 2026. APIIC's own funding is attributed to DST NIDHI i-TBI.

Locations and contact

APIIC is at the Old Building, AIIMS Residential Campus, Hydraulic Khagaul, Patna 801105, Bihar. Visits need a prior appointment. General enquiries go to info@apiic.org. The centre also posts internship openings and runs an events calendar covering conclaves, workshops, seminars and outreach visits; it held an Entrepreneurship Conclave at the AIIMS Patna campus on 18 March 2026 with more than 320 participants, and a workshop on intellectual property rights and technology transfer with NRDC on 14 and 15 November 2025.