The National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) would be rolled out across the country in a couple of months, once the government gets positive feedback from the pilots already launched in six Union Territories (UTs) early this week, a key National Health Authority (NHA) functionary has said.
“We have already rolled it out in six UTs — Ladakh, Chandigarh, Dadra Nagar & Haveli, Puducherry, Lakshadweep and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Doctors and government hospitals there have started the process of enrolment. After learning from these, we will be able to roll it out all over India in a month or two,” said Praveen Gedam, additional CEO at NHA.
The process of enrolment would be voluntary not just for individuals but even for doctors and hospitals. Respective authorities have the right to take the decision whether to join or not, Gedam told BusinessLine.
“The mission will have three major modules — all owned and operated by the government. Every person enrolling will have a health ID and all the health data of that person will get linked to that ID so that the longitudinal medical history of the person is available at one place,” Gedam said
The second major module is DigiDoctor, which is a database of available doctors, and the third a healthcare facility registry where database of health facilities, including hospitals, clinics and labs, will be available. This would range from tertiary hospitals to primary health centres to sub-centres, he said. Many more modules could be built on them, which could be operated either by public sector or private sector, he added.
Medical equivalent of UPI
“This will be more like UPI, platform created by the government for financial services. It is operated through an App, Bhim, also operated by the government. Then there are other apps such as PayTM, GooglePay and PhonePe, which are private apps. Just like UPI created a digital ecosystem for financial services, this is going to be a medical equivalent of UPI. But it will be far more complicated,” admitted the official.
When asked whether entering medical data of each patient into a system would not be an additional burden for medical professionals, who are already hard-pressed for time, Gedam said many private and government hospitals are already doing this. “Moreover, we are incorporating many special features in the module, which will allow them to scan a report or enter their own hand-written prescriptions or even those using universally accepted medical nomenclature,” he said.
There would be even offline modules where, as and when connectivity is there, data can be pushed. Such modules can be very useful for PHCs and sub-centres in areas that have poor net connectivity.
Data security issues
“Electronic health record (EHR) can help bring in better clinical care quality, patient safety, efficiency, savings and well-informed public health measures. As of now, the patient case history is often solely dependent on the memory of the patient or his/her family members,” said Oommen C Kurian, a Senior Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation.
“Once EHR comes into play, clinical decision making won’t be the same again. It will also enable enhanced portability of care, and people will have more control over their health information,” he said.
One risk, however, is that of unscrupulous elements making use of weak implementation of regulations around data privacy and monetising medical information, Kurian said.
Gedam said the NHA is taking all precautions to ensure that data privacy and security are not breached. “We have even incorporated the clauses in the data privacy Bill under the consideration of Parliament while drafting this,” he said.
Suresh Munuswamy, who heads Technology Innovation and Health Informatics at the Public Health Foundation of India, however, said there could be more challenges. For one, he said, when a person is buying medicines using the health ID card, there should be a way by which this can be recorded. “The primary packaging of medicines in India currently doesn’t have a barcode, unlike all other sundry products,” Munuswamy said.