Ayurveda has been in continuous use for over 5,000 years — and everything modern medicine now considers futuristic, Ayurveda already practices. IIT Delhi scientist Smt. Rama Jayasundar opens with a striking timeline comparison: Western medicine’s father Hippocrates, working in the 5th century BC, extrapolated human anatomy from pigs because religious law forbade cadaver dissection. That pig-based anatomy formed the foundation of Western medicine for 1,500 years. Ayurveda, by contrast, had been developing a systematic, rational, and empirically grounded framework for thousands of years before Hippocrates was born.The story of Ayurveda begins with a historic international conference at the Himalayan foothills — attended by physicians from India, Persia, and Greece — convened for the same reason that motivates global health summits today: rising ill health and the search for solutions. The continuity of this tradition is its most remarkable feature: 5,000 years of unbroken clinical observation, refinement, and practice.The future of medicine is precisely what Ayurveda already does — personalised treatment, preventive health, circadian medicine, mind-body integration, precision nutrition, sustainable practice, and multi-modal therapeutic delivery. Ayurveda’s foundational principle says it plainly: may all be happy, may all be healthy — health is not to be made into a business.

About The Speaker:
Prof. Rama Jayasundar, Department of NMR, AIIMS, New Delhi has an unique and unusual career trajectory. A PhD alumnus of University of Cambridge (UK), she is trained in physics and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). While pioneering biomedical NMR work in India, she enrolled for the 5 1/2 years medical degree in Ayurveda (BAMS – Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery) as a full time student at the age of 41. She is the only one at both the national and international levels to hold dual degrees in Physics and Ayurveda. Her current research interests harness the distinctive facets of her expertise (NMR, physics, Ayurveda and Allopathy) to shed light on the scientific basis and working of Ayurveda.