Radiologist Sneh Bhargava spent 30 years at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), including six years as its director, according to an excerpt from her memoir. In the passage, she recalls the responsibilities of leading the institution and the changes in radiology she helped bring about. Scroll.in published the excerpt with permission from Juggernaut.
Who was Sneh Bhargava?
Bhargava joined AIIMS as an assistant professor, later becoming a professor and chair of its radiology department before serving as director. The memoir excerpt says she spent 30 years at the institution, six of them as director. A Google Books bibliographic record dates her director tenure to 1984–1990. Google Books’ record for the memoir lists those dates; The Indian Express and The Wire also describe her as the only woman to have held the post.
What the memoir says about leading AIIMS
Bhargava presents AIIMS as more than a hospital: clinical care, medical education and research depend on one another. She writes, “The complex inter-dependence of these three functions is one of the hallmarks of academic medicine.”
She also conveys the weight of the director’s role in a short, direct sentence: “The responsibility of leading AIIMS was a heavy one.” The excerpt frames leadership through the institution’s linked responsibilities rather than as administration alone.
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How Bhargava recalls changing radiology at AIIMS
In the excerpt, Bhargava recounts her efforts to acquire AIIMS’s first CT scanner and ultrasound machine, and describes her role in developing radiology subspecialty departments. These are details from her memoir account of the department’s evolution.
She also reflects on how artificial intelligence could assist radiologists by sorting large volumes of imaging data and identifying or characterising findings in lung, liver and breast imaging. Her statement is a memoir reflection, not an independent evaluation of current AI systems. She writes: “Artificial intelligence will be integrated into the daily work of radiologists, assisting physicians in improving their diagnosis thanks to its ability to filter through massive amounts of imaging data in seconds.”
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About the memoir
The Woman Who Ran AIIMS: The Memoirs of a Medical Pioneer is by Sneh Bhargava and was published by Juggernaut in 2025. The bibliographic record lists 245 pages and ISBN 9789353457235. In the excerpt, Bhargava says she was 95 when writing the passage; that is her statement about the time of writing, not a claim about her present age. Read the excerpt on Scroll.in, published with Juggernaut’s permission.
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