The honourable Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi inaugurated the National Digital Health Mission (Now Known As The PMJay – Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission) on the 75th Republic Day, 26th January 2021. The announcement was made with a strong mission of making healthcare a safer, secure and faster facility for every citizen of India.
The problems & gaps in today’s healthcare society of India especially when we were badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the government of India to make better & robust medical infrastructure. Here’s a brief walkthrough.
Problems In The Current Healthcare System?
Though the diagnostics industry is shifting towards a holistic scope leveraging technology, there are gaps in the current management system. It is deprived of information access, better connectivity and on the whole better decision-making tools to funnel this growing shift.
While lack of resources & knowledge to run new-age systems impacts various medical entities, patients are the ones most affected by these drawbacks.
So, once these problems are fixed with the right technological solutions, there would be fewer to no gaps in terms of time, money and service delivery for both the healthcare delivering business as well as the patients seeking aid.
Goal Of Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission
AB-DHM (Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission) is a government initiative that strives to build and boost digital healthcare infrastructure for the Indian healthcare ecosystem. Its goal is to bring all healthcare entities to a single accessible platform from wherein they can connect, control and share information at ease. The entities consist of patients, doctors, healthcare facilities, insurance companies, aggregators, and other stakeholders.
Reference to the above: ABDM
A health id will be the key identification of every patient visiting any healthcare or wellness facility. This will maintain the health history of the patient encrypted and safe in the health registry that can be accessed through controlled consent. Similarly, other entities can have other paperwork available through registries.
Read ahead to understand how the accessibility of information is designed for everyone.
Read ahead to understand how accessibility is a boon for everyone.
Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission Overview
The platform is designing a digital health registry that securely records & stores different types of health records, documents, essential paperwork and more to benefit every stakeholder that can benefit from being a part of this mission.
The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission’s infrastructure contains 3 major registries:
The Electronic Registry
The Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission aims to design e-registries for the following:
- The Doctor Registry
- The Facility Registry
- The Drug Registry
- The Procedure Registry
This registry will be most beneficial for doctors & their facilities enabling an identity to a lot of procedures and clinical/surgical setups.
Personal Health Record Facility
Enabling easy access to patient health records via different online systems & devices can speed up any medical procedure towards patient welfare. However, the access to patient information for any diagnostics, medical or pharmaceutical facility will be controlled through patient consent.
The following would fall under personal health records:
- Diagnostics Reports
- Prescriptions
- Health Studies & Records
- Discharge Summary
Whenever a patient wants to take follow-ups or consult a doctor in the future, sharing medical history and consultation would be super convenient. Remote access would also save unnecessary travelling and effort from patients whenever aid is a priority.
The Electronic Claims
The insurance space (also the grey area) is the healthcare payer area that really matters today. Being one of the most pragmatic parts of healthcare, it is vital to add incentives for the payers for any healthcare system to do well in order to transform the insurance experience for everyone.
These include:
- E-claims
- Ayushman Bharat Insurance
- E-vouchers For Providers
Advantages For Every Stakeholder
Ease Of Access
At the time of higher medical attention, ease of access is a great advantage for both the consultant doctors as well as the patient. With quick accessibility the time and effort required for medical formalities are eliminated, rather the facility is focused on delivering aid.
Connectivity Made Quick & Effortless
Communication with your provider is crucial and Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission strives to make it quick & effortless for you. With improved communication & connectivity across the healthcare network, connecting to a relevant facility, insurance company or seeking an aggregator for business promotions is smooth.
Faster Patient Aid
The waiting period & lack of availability of providers at the right time is a major drawback that affects life. The digitally secure platform with informative registries offers more open ways for patients to reach out to a doctor and avail faster aid when needed.
Security & Confidentiality
The biggest advantage of making your medical facility digital is it will be available on a cloud all the time with high-level security. Also, since medicine is a critical area wherein key information on procedures, patients & finance exists, having confidentiality adds the biggest advantage to the stakeholders onboard.
Leverage Consent Management
The best side of this platform is when patients have control of their own health records. What this actually means is that they have the ability to share essential records, documents or paperwork with anyone across the facility using control & timely access only.
