The Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) Chandigarh was conceived in 1960 as a center of excellence that would endeavor to develop patterns of teaching in postgraduate medical education in as many branches as possible and attempt to produce specialists in several disciplines of medicine. It was also envisaged that these specialists would spread out in the country in various medical colleges and medical institutions and impart medical education of the highest standard to the students and set up a nucleus of excellence in their own institutions. The PGIMER was also given the responsibility to broaden the horizons of medical knowledge by intensive research in the field of health.
PGIMER owes its inception to the vision of late Sardar Partap Singh Kairon, the then Chief Minister of Punjab, and the distinguished medical educationists of the then combined state of Punjab, supported by the first Prime Minister of India Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru who considered the institutions of scientific knowledge as temples of learning and the places of pilgrimage. The institute started in 1962 and Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru inaugurated the hospital now named “Nehru Hospital” on 7th July 1963. The Institute was originally under the Government of undivided Punjab. After the reorganization of the state, the administrative control of the institute was passed on to the Union Territory of Chandigarh in November 1966. The Institute became an autonomous body under the Act of Parliament in 1967 functioning under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, with the following mandate.