PM Modi rolls out digital health mission to create unique health ID for every citizen

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched the National Digital Health Mission under which every citizen in India is now eligible to generate a unique health ID that will contain their medical history and records in a longitudinal manner.

"Today is a very important day," said the Prime Minister while launching the drive. "The drive to strengthen the health facilities of the country, in the last seven years, is entering a new phase today. This is not an ordinary phase. This is an extraordinary phase," he added.

The mission was announced by PM Narenra Modi on August 15 last year and has been operational in 6 Union Territories since then on a pilot basis.

Among other things, the plan is mainly aimed at providing easy access to electronic health records to citizens, generating health record data and also ensuring privacy of personal health data along with consent-based access to electronic health records.

According to officials, health IDs can be created by providing basic information that includes full name, year of birth, gender, and either a mobile number or an Aadhaar number.

As per the NDHM policy document, the objective of the mission is "to create a system of digital personal and medical health records which is easily accessible to individuals and health service providers and is purely voluntary in nature, based on the consent of individuals".

The government has said that this system can be used to create personal health records for each individual wherein records generated by various health information providers like doctors, healthcare facilities and laboratories can be collated and viewed by that individual and by healthcare providers with the consent of the individual only.