NEW DELHI: An ambitious programme to create a unique health ID, that will also work as a health account, for every Indian citizen is set to be launched on Monday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi had first announced the PM-Digital Health Mission during his Independence Day speech in 2020 after which it was soft launched in six Union Territories, barring Delhi, on a pilot basis.
The government said that the scheme’s nation-wide rollout coincides with the National Health Authority celebrating the third anniversary of the Centre’s ambitious Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana. As per the Union health ministry, based on the foundations laid down in the form of Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and mobile trinity and other digital initiatives, PM-Digital Health Mission was pitched to create a seamless online platform through the provision of a wide-range of data, information and infrastructure services, duly leveraging open, interoperable, standards-based digital systems.
It will ensure the security, confidentiality and privacy of health-related personal information, said a statement, adding that the mission will enable access and exchange of longitudinal health records of citizens with their consent. The key components 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.
It will also have a registry of healthcare professionals and facilities registries that will act as a repository of all healthcare providers across both modern and traditional systems of medicine. This will ensure ease of doing business for doctors, hospitals and healthcare service providers, the ministry has claimed.
Created as a part of the mission, PM-Digital Health Mission sandbox was slated to act as a framework for technology and product testing that will help organisations, including private players, intending to be a part of national digital health ecosystem become a health information provider or health information user or efficiently link with building blocks of the scheme
This mission will create interoperability within the digital health ecosystem, similar to the role played by the unified payments interface in revolutionising payments, the government has claimed, while citizens will only be a click-away from accessing healthcare facilities.