Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission: A New Digital Health Services to Link Patient and Healthcare Provider

Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) is an initiative started by the Government of India to digitalise health records across the country. ABDM was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September 2021, it aims to revolutionise India's healthcare system.

With the launch of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, the government is aiming to develop the needed infrastructure to support the integrated digital health system of the country. It will connect the different stakeholders involved in the healthcare ecosystem through the digital pathways.

Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission: Establishing and Managing Health Data

Through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, each citizen will get a digital health ID and their health data would be digitally protected. The implementing agency of the mission is the National Health Authority under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission includes QR code-based quick OPD registration service. This QR code-based OPD registration service will allow the patients to scan the hospital's unique QR code with their mobile phone.

Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission: Allowing Citizens to Access and Manage their Health Records Digitally

Under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, more than 4 crore digital health records are linked to the Ayushman Bharat Health Accounts of individuals. In building a comprehensive digital health ecosystem for the country, the ABDM scheme is making a healthy progress, with over 29 crore citizens already generated their unique ABHA.

ABHA allows citizens to access and manage digitally their health records and to create a complete medical history across various healthcare providers and these health records can be shared with ABDM-registered healthcare providers.

Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission: A Vision to Create a National Digital Health Ecosystem

The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission aims to create a national digital health ecosystem that will support universal health coverage efficiently and is accessible in a safe way, providing a wide range of information and infrastructure services, complying to standards-based digital systems and ensuring the security and privacy of health-related personal information.

Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission: Adopting Standards Accepted by All Digital Health Stakeholders

The main objective of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission is to strengthen the accessibility to quality health services for all, and establishing advanced digital health systems to manage the digital health data; maintaining a registry with respect to clinical establishments, healthcare professionals and pharmacies; ensuring adoption of open standards accepted by all digital health stakeholders; creating and maintaining international standards-based personal health records, which is used by individuals, healthcare professionals and services providers; adopting best principles of cooperative governance;

ensuring cooperation among the healthcare institutions and professionals and the private sector for building the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission; ensuring portability across the nation with respect to the provisions of health services; leveraging health data analytics and medical research for promoting better management of the healthcare sector; and supporting measures for ensuring quality of healthcare.

Citizens Sharing Health Records with ABDM-Registered Healthcare Providers

As their health records are linked to their ABHA digitally, citizens are able to access and manage these records as per their convenience, enabling citizens to generate a comprehensive medical history across various healthcare providers and helping them in the clinical decision-making process.

The citizens are also able to share their health records with ABDM-registered healthcare providers.

The National Health Authority is the implementing agency for ABDM, and it is working closely with different stakeholders in the healthcare sector to ensure that a greater number of citizens are benefitted from digital health services.

The government is also planning to launch an incentive scheme for health facilities such as hospitals, diagnostic labs, etc. to promote the digitization of health records.

Digitization to Ensure Accuracy of Health Records

The main focus of the government with the digitization of health records is to achieve paperless medical consultations, thereby ensuring accuracy in each transaction between the patient and healthcare service provider.