Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 27 September, 2021 launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, under which a digital health ID will be provided to people that will contain their health records, and asserted that it has the potential to bring revolutionary changes in healthcare.
About Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission:
1) Under the mission, a unique digital health ID will be provided to the people, which will contain all the health records of the person.
2) The pilot project of the National Digital Health Mission was announced by PM Modi during his Independence Day speech from the Red Fort on August 15, 2020.
3) At present, the project is being implemented in the pilot phase in six Union Territories. The nationwide rollout of the project coincides with National Health Authority (NHA) celebrating the third anniversary of Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY).
4) The mission will enable access and exchange of longitudinal health records of citizens with their consent. This health account will contain details of every test, every disease, the doctors visited for check-ups, the medicines taken and the diagnosis.
5) The key components of the project 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, a Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) and Healthcare Facilities Registries (HFR) 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 and hospitals and healthcare service providers.
6) The mission will create integration within the digital health ecosystem, similar to the role played by the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in revolutionising payments. Citizens will only be a click-away from accessing healthcare facilities.
