Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission

The National Health Authority (NHA), the implementing agency for the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, has invited expressions of interest in developing innovative solutions that will help build a national digital health ecosystem.

• Launched in September 2021, the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) aims to provide digital health IDs for all Indian citizens to help hospitals, insurance firms, and citizens access health records electronically when required.
• The National Health Authority (NHA) under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is the implementing Agency.
• The mission aims to create a seamless online platform that will enable interoperability within the digital healthcare ecosystem.
• The mission has been conceptualized as a set of 'digital building blocks'.
  • Each building block is seen as a 'digital public good' that can be used by any entity in the digital health ecosystem and provides key capabilities that enable the ABDM vision.

What are the features of the mission?

• Health ID made for every beneficiary:
• It will be issued for every citizen that will also work as their health account. This health account will contain details of every test, every disease, the doctors visited, the medicines taken and the diagnosis.
• Health ID is free of cost, voluntary. It will help in doing analysis of health data and lead to better planning, budgeting and implementation for health programs.
• Healthcare Facilities & Professionals’ Registry:
• The other major component of the programme is creating a Healthcare Professionals’ Registry (HPR) and Healthcare Facilities Registry (HFR), allowing easy electronic access to medical professionals and health infrastructure.
• The HPR will be a comprehensive repository of all healthcare professionals involved in delivering healthcare services across both modern and traditional systems of medicine.
• The HFR database will have records of all the country’s health facilities.
• Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission Sandbox:
• The 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 Health Information User or efficiently link with building blocks of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission.

What are Benefits and concerns?

• Expected Benefits:
  • Ensure ease of doing businessfor doctors and hospitals and healthcare service providers.
  • Enable access and exchange of longitudinal health records of citizens with their consent.
  • Create integration within the digital health ecosystem, similar to the role played by the Unified Payments Interface (UPI)in revolutionising payments.
  • The mission will improve "equitable access" to quality healthcare as it'll encourage the use of technologiessuch as telemedicine, and enable national portability of health services.
• Concerns:
  • The lack of a data protection billcould lead to the misuse of data by private firms and bad actors.
  • Exclusion of citizens and denied healthcaredue to faults in the system are also a cause of concern.
    

What is the need of an innovative solution?

• The ABDM seeks to develop the foundations of an integrated digital health infrastructure of India, connecting the different stakeholders of the healthcare ecosystem through digital pathways.
• Its building blocks are digital systems consisting of digital health IDs, registries of health professionals and facilities, and patient health records.
• Currently, there are separate web portals for each system.
• The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM)’s ambition requires all hands on deck.
• In this regard, the National Health Authority is giving an open call inviting all interested parties to contribute to the Unified Health Interface (UHI), Health Claims Protocol (HCP), and various other open-source digital public goods being created to expand the digital health ecosystem.

How would it help?

• This collaborative approach will not just help speed up the development but also help in making digital public goods available to public and/or private entities
• The NHA intends to develop a digital platform similar to the Unified Payment Interface or UPI for interoperability between various digital solutions to facilitate various stakeholders using disparate solutions to communicate, according to the statement.