Adjunct Professor,
Clinical Epidemiology Unit,
Prof BV Moses Centre for Evidence-Informed Health Care and Health Policy, Carman Block II Floor,
Christian Medical College
Dr Prathap Tharyan is Adjunct Professor, Clinical Epidemiology Unit & Prof. BV Moses Centre at the Christian Medical College, Vellore. He trained for his undergraduate (MBBS) and post-graduate (MD Psychiatry) degrees at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India. He trained for the Membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (MRCPsych) in Oxford, UK. He joined the faculty of the Christian Medical College, Vellore in 1988. Dr Tharyan served as Head of Psychiatry Unit II and Head of the Department of Psychiatry; Deputy Medical Superintendent; Additional Vice-Principal for Research; Associate Director (Human Resources); Warden, Men’s Hostel; and President of the Alumni Association of the Christian Medical College. Dr Tharyan retired as Professor of Psychiatry on August 1st 2017.
Dr Tharyan was the founding Director of Cochrane South Asia, an independent Centre of the Cochrane Collaboration (http://www.cochrane.org) that was hosted at the Prof BV Moses Centre (http://www.bvmc.in/ ) at CMC Vellore from January 2005 to January 2019. The Prof BV Moses Centre is now an affiliate centre of the Cochrane India Network, and Dr Tharyan serves in an advisory role. Dr Tharyan is also a systematic review author (and former Editor) with the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group, and a review author with many other Cochrane Review Groups. He was a founding member of the Evidence Aid Project of the Cochrane Collaboration that seeks to make available summaries of evidence for interventions to be used after disasters, in order to aid planning the humanitarian response to disasters.
Dr Tharyan was an Associate Editor with The Journal of Evidence Based Medicine and the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. He was a member of the Editorial Advisory Board the British Medical Journal and the journal of Clinical Epidemiology and Global Health. Dr Tharyan was a member of Advisory Group of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (WHO- ICTRP); and is a founding member of the steering group of the Clinical Trials Registry-India. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group of the Indian Council for Medical Research. He is a life member of the Forum for Research Ethics Committees in India (FERCI) and was for many years a member of the Institutional Review Board of CMC Vellore and of its Research Advisory Group.
Dr Tharyan main interests are in facilitating improvements in the design, ethical and scientific conduct, reporting, interpretation and implementation of research evidence in India and other countries in the region, and in increasing the uptake of reliable evidence to inform decisions aimed at improving health outcomes. In 2020, Dr Tharyan was listed among Stanford University’s 2020 list of top 2% of scientists in the world based on citations within his area of expertise.
