SHILLONG, Aug 5: The Department of Forensic Medicine at NEIGRIHMS has upgraded its laboratory with GCMS (Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry) facility which enables accurate identification and quantification of various types of poisons from clinical and autopsy samples of blood and urine.
The facility was formally inaugurated on August 2 by the Director of the institute, Prof Nalin Mehta.
HoD of Forensic Medicine, Prof AJ Patowary stated that the lab will start testing amples from in-house departments of NEIGRIHMS for qualitative and quantitative assessment of blood alcohol and will subsequently extend these services to other institutes with inclusion of a wider range of poisons for analysis. The facility will be of great value in the region for toxicology analysis in police investigation.
In addition, the Department of Forensic Medicine also completed hands-on training on Virtual Autopsy with six participants from various premier institutes of India. The training was conducted with funding from the Department of Health Research. The NEIGRIHMS Director distributed the certificates to participants on successful completion of the training.
In his address, Dr Mehta lauded the department for its efforts to start this new venture and expected that the knowledge acquired by participants during the training would be disseminated to other parts of the country as well.
