About Us
The Faculty of Indigenous Medicine (FIM) of Sri Lanka affiliated to the University of Colombo and it is located in the historic city of Sri Jayewardenepura at Rajagiriya. Established in the year 1929, to promote Indigenous systems of medicine and Ayurveda. The system of Indigenous Medicine can be traced to the ancient history of Sri Lanka dating back to pre-Christian era. The formal efforts of promoting this system of medicine by the state began ancient era, with establishment of the department of Ayurveda medicine and increase in emphasize and development efforts came in to being after 1956 change of government policies.
The mission of FIM is to revive and promote this indigenous system of medicine that has served the people well in the past to continue its crucial role in ensuring good health and health standards of the people through application of its medical practices and products. The avowed vision is promotion of healthy life style for people taking maximum advantage of available natural products, effectively and efficiently and preserving the natural environment to achieve these goals through a systematic research and development teaching and training of physicians using this system of medicine. The Unit par with the mission and vision of the FIM.
The FIM as a teaching and research Institute, operating its academic medical training in Sri Lanka, has found out through its regular interactions with students, practitioners and other stakeholders, the urgent need for directing its research and development (R&D) efforts, to develop natural pharmaceutical Indigenous and Ayurveda products, utilizing the existing local traditional knowledge, medical plants, minerals and animal products to meet the needs of increasing the market demand for this system of medicine. In order to address this issue through a well-coordinated research and development efforts, for clinical product development and its related commercialization of the natural products, the FIM established the “Research and Development of Natural Products Unit”. This Unit is housed at the IIM and function as affiliated unit under the Director of FIM and the team of Unit of DravyagunaVignana.
Aim of the Unit is to build strategic alliance of academics, relevant government Authority, the pharmaceutical industry firms and other interest groups to participate in research and development dialogue and evolve strategic development process for research development and commercialization of natural products. The anticipated strategic alliance for Unit can be based on public- private partnership (PPP) mode for conduction research and development (R & D) of relevant natural products and their commercialization. After identifying the specific areas of cooperation and integration in the anticipated R&D efforts and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) can be affected between IIM and interested private sector firms. It is the view of IIM, that all basic research and clinical product development efforts be concentrated at the newly established unit while the commercialization aspects, promotion, marketing of the product develop to be done jointly by the Unit and the private sector partner/s under an agreement together with funding formula according to the University of Colombo rules and regulations. All products developed at the unit will have a brand name with FIM, University of Colombo following the regulations of the University of Colombo business link (UBL).