NHA launches Unified Health Interface to make digital health services interoperable

The National Health Authority on Friday announced the launch of the Unified Health Interface (UHI) under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM).

UHI is an open network designed to enable interoperable digital health service delivery like tele-consultations.

Currently, there are no open protocols defined for delivery of digital health services. This results in the several fragmented, non-interoperable platforms providing health services in the market.

For example, in order to obtain a digital health service like tele-consultation or booking an appointment the platform approach requires both patients and health service providers to use the same platform. In an open network, such as UHI, patients and health service providers can be on different applications but will be able to seamlessly interact.

UHI will be powered by decentralised health protocols (DHP) built by an open community of developers and deployed on a gateway built by NHA.

UHI will adopt major versions of DHPs developed by the community.

The NHA has also invited developers to join the DHP and contribute to UHI.

Meanwhile, NHA’s internal team has also been working on the same.

NHA said any technology provider currently developing digital health solutions for hospitals, doctors, labs or consumers can create new solutions using DHP and become a part of UHI network.