National Medical Library Holds 5th ERMED Consortium Conference

The National Medical Library (NML), which works under the Directorate General of Health Services in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, held the 5th One-Day National Training-cum-Conference on the ERMED Consortium at its own premises in New Delhi on 9 October 2026.

The theme and who spoke

The conference carried the theme Digital Health Resources: Redefining Access Through Libraries. The inaugural session was attended by Smt. Punya Salila Srivastava, Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Vinod Kotwal, Additional Secretary in the ministry, and Dr. Lovneesh G. Krishna, Director General of Health Services.

What the Health Secretary said

The Health Secretary described the library as a gateway to knowledge that underpins medical education, research and care. She noted that the NML network now reaches 93 medical colleges and pressed for it to be stretched to every medical college in the country, especially those in underserved areas. Digital health resources, she argued, are not merely a way of reaching information but an enabler of a research culture, and she placed the One Nation One Subscription initiative alongside the ERMED Consortium as complementary routes to scholarly publications. She asked the library to draw up a roadmap that includes the place of artificial intelligence in medical education and research, and to help states and union territories adopt good medical library practices.

What the DGHS said

Dr. Krishna said libraries are turning from physical places people visit into platforms that carry knowledge to the user, and called the consortium's reshaping in 2024 an important move towards shared access. Citing the National Education Policy 2020 and One Nation One Subscription, he said medical libraries must convert information into evidence, evidence into knowledge and knowledge into better care, with more stress on AI literacy and research skills. Dr. Kotwal said faculty, infrastructure and knowledge resources are the three pillars of a medical college.

Training, panel and release

A main feature was hands-on training on four ERMED resource platforms, namely ClinicalKey, BMJ, Access Medicine and MedOne. A panel discussion titled From Custodian to Clinical Partner: The Next Mandate for the Medical Librarian examined how the role of medical librarians is widening beyond managing collections. The Health Secretary released the NML Newsletter and Souvenir. Dr. Mukesh Pathak, Director of the NML, and Dr. B. Srinivas, Deputy Director General in the DGHS, were among those present.