Dr Nikhil TANDON
Dr Nikhil Tandon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), and has worked within the public healthcare system of India for nearly 30 years as a clinician-researcher specializing in cardio-metabolic disease. His research group has conducted large scale epidemiology studies evaluating the prevalence of cardio-metabolic risk factors and their associations. This includes being a founding investigator of the CARRS Cohort, established with support from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, USA which has followed nearly 30,000 adults for more than 10 years. In the field of clinical intervention studies, he has been involved in innovative use of technology and quality improvement strategies to facilitate care delivery for people with diabetes and hypertension, keeping in mind the resource constraints of a country like India, but with scope for generalizability in other economies. These strategies include but are not restricted to use of a care coordinator, decision support software, clinic flow modifications, opportunistic screening and task sharing with non-physician health care providers. He has served on several WHO Expert Groups including the recently constituted WHO Technical Advisory Group on Diabetes (TAG/D) and the South East Asia Regional Expert Group for Noncommunicable Diseases. At the national level in India, he is a member of governmental advisory committees to develop guidelines for chronic disease care in India, chair of the Technical Advisory Group of the ICMR Young Diabetes Registry, and Member of the Technical Advisory Group for the National Programme for NonCommunicable Disease. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, National Academy of Science India, Indian Academy of Science and Indian National Science Academy. He is a recipient of the Dr BC Roy Award and the Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award.