Telangana govt plans to capture health data to further Life Sciences sector

The data collection involves adoption of electronics record-keeping mechanisms, online portals, and mobile-applications.
Image used for representational purpose only
Image used for representational purpose only

HYDERABAD: The Telangana government is planning to capture the public health data through data collection for understanding the morbidity and mortality profiles of people.

The Life Sciences Advisory Committee made these recommendations as part of its plans to boost the Life Sciences sector in the coming decade. The data collection involves adoption of electronics record-keeping mechanisms, online portals, and mobile-applications.

The collection of health data is part of an overall plan "surveilling" disease. "There is a need to design a comprehensive programme to target communicable as well as increasingly emerging non-communicable diseases first, assess the disease burden, detect trends, and duly allocate resources," said the Life Sciences Vision document.

As part of the much more important data collection component of this step, the Life Sciences Advisory Committee recommended the State government to mandate "moratality and morbidity recording for critical diseases that have been identified across public and private institutions."

As for data management and assimilation, the data would work towards identifying "patterns among age groups, genders, regions, education levels, occupation categories, lifestyle parameters, and more," the document said. These epidemiological and compliance reports will be circulated in all healthcare centres and review meetings involving State, district and block level teams.

However, privacy activists slammed the move calling it unnecessary and an infringement on the Right to Privacy judgement passed by the Supreme Court. Experts claim that this move may be against the ethical gudelines of doctor-patient confidentiality. "Healthcare data is sacred. Will the Telangana government take permission each time they share this sensitive information?" a privacy researcher said.
 

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