National Digital Health Blueprint released, Harsh Vardhan says India to lead digital healthcare revolution

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Monday released the National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB), bringing in the National Digital Health Eco-system (NDHE) that can ensure the availability of healthcare services on a wider scale.

The NDHB will support the quality of healthcare, universal health coverage in an efficient, accessible, inclusive, affordable, timely and safe manner through the provision of a wide range of data, information, and infrastructure services.

"The objective is to establish state-of-the-art digital health systems, for managing the core digital health data, the infrastructure required for its seamless exchange. Also to create a system of personal health records, based on international standards and easily accessible to the citizens and healthcare providers," Dr. Harsh Vardhan said.

"Under the Prime Minister's Narendra Modi vision of Digital India, we are moving from Information Technology towards Ecosystem Technology i.e. National Digital Health Eco-system (NDHE) that can ensure availability of healthcare services on a wider scale," he told ANI.

He added that to achieve the goal of the National Health Policy (NHP-2017), the health ministry is focusing on digital technologies to get the highest level of health for all. Hence, they are adopting the principle of 'Think Big, Start Small, and Scale Fast.'

Dr. Vardhan informed that a committee was constituted by the health ministry to create an implementation framework for the National Digital Health Blueprint and Former IT secretary and EX- UIDAI chairperson J Satyanarayana is the committee chairman.

"We are seeking comments and suggestions from healthcare professionals, both from the private and government sectors. We will also start the training of healthcare workers in all States and districts soon," he added.

A few ongoing initiatives in Digital health are being implemented by the health ministry including Reproductive Child Healthcare (RCH), Integrated Disease Surveillance Program (IDSP), Ayushman Bharat- Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna, and Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN), etc.