Health min partners Dell, Tata Trusts for screening and management of non-communicable diseases

The Union Health Ministry Thursday roped in Tata Trusts and Dell for a technological platform on nationwide prevention, control, screening and management of non communicable diseases (NCDs).

The number of deaths due to NCDs has increased from 37.9 per cent in 1990 to 61.8 per cent in 2016.

The NCD screening programme is aimed at addressing hypertension, diabetes, oral, breast and cervical cancers and covers all men and women over the age of 30 years.

The programme is one of the modules in the government's ambitious Ayushman Bharat's Comprehensive Primary Healthcare (CPHC) initiative, which is currently being deployed in about 200 districts across the country, a Health Ministry statement said.

"Through implementation of the software, it will also be possible to track health trends across the country," it said.

While the global IT giant Dell has developed the technology solution, Tata Trusts is providing deployment support for the programme. The software application will help in plugging gaps at the field level, the ministry said.

"A cloud-based mobile, web and analytics solution has been developed to digitize health records to aid the population-based screening program, to bring quality health services at door step, to enable increased productivity for health workers and doctors, and to facilitate monitoring of delivery of services by state and district administrators," the ministry said.

Minister of State for Health Anupriya Patel, who presided over the ceremony, also released a user manual for the NCD application.

She said the government has decided to go ahead with population-based screening under the National Health Mission for diabetes, Hypertension and three types of common cancers.

According to the Ministry statement, Tata Trusts is supporting the quality implementation of the programme in states through training, and programme management activities to ensure technology adoption amongst health staff and steady progress through continuous monitoring.

The NCD IT solution covers program-level data for screening, referral, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up activities of non-communicable diseases with an aim to connect health workers, doctors and decision-makers in a single, integrated platform, it said.

It will provide health records for citizens, mobile applications for health workers, a web portal for the medical officers and dashboards for health officials, the ministry said.