We strongly believe in maintaining transparency in our functioning as an organisation. In keeping with this principle, we have answered questions that we are asked frequently. If you have further queries, do get in touch with us; we will be happy to respond.
A: No. QMed is a Registered Trust. We are registered with the Charity Commissioner, Mumbai. VS was the person who conceptualized the idea of setting up this Trust to achieve changes in the medical education and research domain in India.
So none of us who works for QMed owns it. But we do work as if it is ours!
In all these years, we have not reached that stage. We face deficits in funding pretty often. From the time the Covid pandemic set in, the deficit was large and almost every month our Trustee Mr Sriganesh augmented funds needed. It has been a little better in the second half of 2022 and we hope things improve.
A: Since our establishment as a Trust, the bulk of our funding has come from our the Founder’s family and friends. We also generate revenues from institutions for our workshops and our online courses. We raise donations from the public and from health professionals and students.
In the early days, we had received small grants from the SMLRT – Society for Medical Learning Resources Transfer – a body of doctors based in Chennai. Our office premises is owned by one of our trustees, who has been kind in letting us use it as our office space without any rental charges. Our trustee also provides a vehicle for commuting when required. These are huge cost savings, that allows us to focus our limited revenue on our activities. Importantly, our team has also been taking very modest salaries.
Since 2013, we began crowd funding activities on GlobalGiving (USA) and twice in India through ImpactGuru and Milaap. While all these help a lot, we have yet to reach a level of self sustenance, which we are sure will happen when a critical mass of institutions and individuals in the health professions, enrol for our online courses. In the meantime we welcome support. Your contribution will greatly help India’s health research
A. QMed Knowledge Foundation was established as a Trust in 2007. As a concept, however, we started out in 1999. Back then, we were QMed Services Private Limited. We were engaged in providing copyright-cleared articles to pharmaceutical companies, and sourced articles from libraries for academic purposes on request from educational institutions. However, we realised that the concept was way ahead of its times. During this period, we realised that students and practitioners were not trained in the art of searching for medical literature. There was a need to guide medical information seekers in locating relevant articles, teach them to use online information resources, and assist libraries to organise their infrastructure for the benefit of users. We decided then, to transform into a not for profit entity and bridge the lacuna in literature searching. We were the pioneers in this field in India.
We are now in 2022. Our course participants STILL tell us that they wish they’d learnt what we teach, earlier.
Till March 2020, we provided full text article services to the Industry (Pharma etc), from QMed Services Private Limited. We closed this business in end March 2020.
Page last checked / updated on 6-Dec-2024