NEW DELHI: Union Health and Family Welfare Minister JP Nadda on Monday launched the Drug Registry, a unified digital platform to standardise medicine-related information across India's healthcare system.
Developed under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), the registry will serve as a single source of verified drug information, enabling consistent identification, storage, exchange and use of medicine data across healthcare platforms.
The registry has been developed in collaboration with the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) and the National Resource Centre for EHR Standards (NRCeS), Pune. It uses international standards, including SNOMED CT, to ensure interoperability across digital health systems.
It includes standardised codes for generic medicines, branded drugs and substances. At present, the registry contains more than 1.23 lakh branded drugs, over 10,000 generic drugs and more than 29,000 substances.
Users can search medicines by generic name, brand name, substance or manufacturer. The platform is designed to integrate with Hospital Management Information Systems (HMIS), e-prescription platforms, doctor-facing applications and other ABDM-compliant digital health solutions through open APIs.
The registry is one of the four core registries under ABDM, along with the ABHA Registry, Healthcare Professional Registry and Health Facility Registry.
At the event, Nadda also launched the Ayushman Sarathi PM-JAY WhatsApp chatbot, which enables beneficiaries to access PM-JAY services through WhatsApp, the Unified Health Interface (UHI) to connect patients and healthcare providers across digital platforms, eSushrut@Clinic, a government-backed Hospital Management Information System developed by C-DAC for small clinics, and Aarogya Setu 2.0, which has been redesigned as a Personal Health Record app and digital gateway for health services.