Digital health initiatives to cater 8000 rural health centers: Experts

The launching of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday opened a new vista for India's health care sector. Talking to ETV Bharat, renowned health expert Dr Tamorish Kole said that India can not only provide care at large hospitals but also through 8000 rural health and wellness centres spread across the nation.

New Delhi: The launching of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday opened a new vista for India's health care sector. Talking to ETV Bharat, renowned health expert Dr Tamorish Kole said that India can not only provide care at large hospitals but also through 8000 rural health and wellness centres spread across the nation.

"The National Digital Health Mission project intends to create an open, interoperable platform connecting digital health solutions for patients, providers, clinics and even pharmacies," said Dr Tamorish Kole, president of Asian Society of Emergency Medicine. Globally over 3.8 billion people cannot access the preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health services they need.

"Due to lack of digital connectivity and financial hardships many people were deprived of such facilities," said Dr Kole. He said that as India embarked on the journey of Ayushman Bharat to provide good quality healthcare as a national health scheme, digital integration was highly required. The pilot project of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission was announced by Modi last year on August 15. At present, the mission is being implemented in six Union Territories in a pilot phase.

"The mission aims to create a seamless online platform to enable information-sharing within the digital health ecosystem," Dr Kole said. The key features 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 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.

"Digital solutions can be deployed to improve the efficiency of healthcare delivery and systems, provide telemedicine facility to the remote locations and ultimately align all these efforts to SDG Goal 3-Good Health Wellbeing," Dr Kole said. Monday's launching of the digital health mission coincides with the third anniversary of the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY).

Lauding the programme, Dr Giridhar Gyani, Director General of the Association of Health Care Providers (AHCP-India) said that it will bring a new harbinger in India's health care ecosystem. "This Mission will now connect the digital health solutions of hospitals across the country. This will also keep all health records of people digitally," said Dr Gyani. He said that this scheme will also be very useful for improving India's rural health sector. The National Health Authority (NHA) has framed the national digital health mission. NHA earlier implemented the country's public health assurance scheme called "Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana".