TOPIC : GOVERNMENT SCHEME
The National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) was launched on August 15 and India has ushered in a new era of technology-enabled health care delivery. The prime minister’s vision of an Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) can only be realised by a "Swasth Bharat”, which, in turn, requires data integration and standardisation as critical health ecosystem enablers.
NDHM is built on the principles of ensuring greater inclusivity, efficiency and transparency in the health sector. For patients, the mission aims to simplify access to their records and enables them to share digitally-stored comprehensive health profiles with providers for treatment and follow-up purposes. The enrolment in this program is voluntary.
ABOUT DIGITAL HEALTH ID:
The health ID will be in the form of a mobile application. Patients can create a health ID, allowing them to share their data between hospitals and doctors digitally. They can choose for how long or what specific documents they would like to share with whom. If individuals are looking to benefit from government schemes, then they will be required to connect their ID to their Aadhaar. They can choose for how long or what specific documents they would like to share with whom. If individuals are looking to benefit from government schemes, then they will be required to connect their ID to their Aadhaar.
One copy of a patient’s records are stored in their doctor’s files and one is stored in their own individual locker (which can be owned by a company or by the government). Other than the registry of doctors, professionals, and institutions, this allows for decentralised storing.
PROS:
- National Health ID program can benefit all the parties involved – patients and healthcare professionals. By knowing the entire medical history, doctors can provide better treatment for the patients. And there will be no need to go through all the tests when consulting another doctor. This can save money & effort of patients.
- As everything will be recorded, this program instils fear & responsibility in healthcare professionals and hence improves accountability. So, this can reduce medical errors.
- This program is voluntary. So, this will not be against the right to privacy.
- With this program, the government will have so much data on the prevalent diseases, and the vulnerable age groups & regions etc. This data can be utilised using Artificial Intelligence to craft policies to improve the health of the citizens.
- This can also help insurance companies by reducing the scope of false claims.
- In general, patients are not able to understand the names of the medicines written by doctors due to their handwriting. With NDHM, prescriptions will be noted online, and hence patients can understand the names of prescribed medicines.
- As the charges can be paid through this ID, there is a scope of keeping a check on arbitrary charges by hospitals.
CONS:
- May compromise privacy because, with this program, sensitive health information will be in the hands of the government. If there is no strict implementation of privacy laws, the data may go into the hands of private players too.
- Digitalising health records is very expensive and may put an extra burden on the Indian economy, which is already facing a deep and prolonged slowdown.
- In the Indian healthcare sector, there is a shortage of human resources. So, digitalising health records can become a burden for healthcare institutes.
ATTEMPTS OF OTHER COUNTRIES:
- The United States has Electronic medical records (EMR) system was started in 1970s. Even though it has not achieved its goal of 100% coverage, the adoption of EMR is on the rise.
- The UK implemented Electronic Health record system – NHS National Programme for IT in health (NPfIT) from the year 2005 to 2013. But it was stopped due to several reasons such as insufficient planning while deploying the project, data security risks, lack of trust in healthcare professionals etc. It is considered as one of the most expensive healthcare IT failures.
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