Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, in a bid to provide digital health IDs to people who will contain their health records.
The pilot project of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission had been announced by the Prime Minister on August 15, 2020. Currently, Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission is being implemented in a pilot phase in six union territories of Puducherry, Chandigarh, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Andaman, and Nicobar Islands, Daman, Diu, Dadra, and Nagar Haveli.
"Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission will create a seamless online platform through the provision of a wide range of data, information, and infrastructure services, duly leveraging open, interoperable, standards-based digital systems while ensuring the security, confidentiality, and privacy of health-related personal information," according to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).
"It will enable access and exchange of longitudinal health records of citizens with their consent," the PMO said.
The key components of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission include a health ID for every citizen that will also work as their health account, to which personal health records can be linked and viewed with the help of a mobile application, a Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) and Healthcare Facilities Registries (HFR) that will act as a repository of all healthcare providers across both modern and traditional systems of medicine, the PMO further said
This will ensure ease of doing business for doctors and hospitals and healthcare service providers.
The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission Sandbox, created as a part of the mission, will act as a framework for technology and product testing that will help organisations, including private players, intending to be a part of the National Digital Health Ecosystem become a health information provider or a health information user or efficiently link with building blocks of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, the PMO said.
This mission will create interoperability within the digital health ecosystem, similar to the role played by the Unified Payments Interface in revolutionising payments, it said.
Citizens will only be a click away from accessing healthcare facilities, the PMO's release added.
