The students had the opportunity to visit some of the region's hospital's to gain an understanding of pharmacists' involvement in healthcare in a different culture and on a scale not seen in Australia.

Senior pharmacy lecturer Dr Mike Angove, said some hospitals had as many as 1800 beds, far more than any Australian hospital.

"They got to experience a completely different healthcare environment to what we have here in Australia and how they deal with that volume of patients in a hospital system, so really it gives them a completely different perspective," he said.

"Most of the wards are all open air with patients sitting everywhere, so all of the healthcare professionals need to be really attuned to what's going on."

The students also visited the university's Ooty campus in India's central highlands where they were involved in the extraction of the active ingredients from traditional herbal medicines.

Dr Angove said a long tradition of herbal remedies in India meant patients were often reluctant to access Western medicine.

"The research that goes on at Ooty is on how to deliver the best healthcare for the local population, particularly those that rely on traditional medicine and exploring a lot of these traditional products to find out what the actual active ingredients are that produce a particular therapeutic effect," he said.

First year Bachelor of Pharmacy student Teagan Van der Drist said the biggest difference between the Australian course and the Indian course was the focus on plant science and and research.

"The big thing was the plant sciences, which was a huge aspect of their culture and ideas of pharmacy that's very different to us and very interesting, it's something that we rarely look into which is a huge part of their knowledge," she said.