It aims to develop the backbone to support the integrated digital health infrastructure of the country to bridge the existing gap amongst different stakeholders of Healthcare ecosystem through digital highways.
Objectives:
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- To establish state-of-the-art digital health systems
- To establish registries at appropriate level to create single source database
- To enforce adoption of open standards by all national digital health stakeholders
- To create a system of personal health records
- To promote the use of clinical decision support (CDS) systems by health professionals and practitioners
- To provide for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of governance at all levels
Components:
| Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) |
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| Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) number |
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| ABHA app |
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| Health Facility Registry (HFR) |
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| Unified Health Interface (UHI) |
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Significance:
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- For Overall healthcare sector:
- It will improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of health service delivery.
- It will digitize the claims process and enable faster reimbursement. Thus, enhancing the overall ease of providing services amongst the health care providers.
- For patients:
- It will empower individuals with accurate information to enable informed decision making and increase accountability of healthcare providers.
- It provides choice to individuals to access both public and private health services.
- For healthcare professionals:
- It will facilitate better access to patient’s medical history (with the necessary informed consent) for prescribing more appropriate and effective health interventions.
- For policy makers:
- The policy makers and programme managers will have better access to data, enabling more informed decision making by the Government.
- It enables geography and demography-based monitoring and appropriate decision making to inform design and strengthen implementation of health programmes and policies.
- For Overall healthcare sector:
Thus, it would facilitate a comprehensive feedback loop between researchers, policymakers, and providers.
Achievements:
According to the National Health Authority (NHA) Annual Report 2022-23:
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- 45 crore Ayushman Bharat Health Accounts have been created.
- 24 lakh healthcare professionals been registered.
- 18 lakh healthcare facilities been registered.
- 30 crore healthcare records have been linked.
Challenges:
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- Wide digital divide and illiteracy prevents certain section of people from adopting ABDM.
- Health is a state subject. This results in overlapping of ABDM with some state specific schemes and so poor implementation.
- Lack of infrastructure to promote digitization of medical data which is costly.
- Poor capacity building and digital skilling of medical professionals to use digital tools.
- Concerns related to data security and privacy.
- Lack of awareness among beneficiaries.
Way Forward:
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- Ensure anonymity and data protection.
- Incentivization of private players to participate in process of digitization of medical data.
- Promote digital education among both citizens and health professionals.
- Increase awareness about access and utilization of digital health data.
