Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission

Published on 13 Feb 2025

The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, launched in 2021, aims to promote digitization of healthcare by creating an open interoperable digital health ecosystem for the country. The programme will be implemented by the National Health Authority.

Features of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission

✔     Health ID: This voluntary card will act as a health account that contains details of every test, disease, doctor's visited, medicines prescribed etc.

✔     ABHA number: A randomly generated 14 digit number for uniquely identifying persons, authenticating them and threading their health records.

✔     Healthcare professionals registry: A comprehensive repository of all healthcare professionals involved in both modern and traditional systems of medicine.

✔     Healthcare facilities registry: A database of all the healthcare infrastructure and facilities available across various health facilities in India.

Intended benefits of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission

 

Challenges in the implementation of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission

✔     Data security concerns: Since the data involves sensitive health information, there has been concern regarding privacy maintenance.

●      Example: Events like AIIMS cyber-attack, which encrypted around 1.3 TB of data raise concern among the public.

✔     Interoperability issue: Healthcare systems often use different standards and technologies, leading to interoperability challenges.

✔     Lack of digital literacy: The poor digital penetration among the rural poor hinders them from accessing the benefits of the programme.

●      Example: Only 38% of households in India are digitally literate. (Ministry of Labour & Employment)

✔     Resistance to change: The healthcare providers may exhibit inhibition to invest in new technology due to concerns regarding workflow disruption and training needs.

✔     Resource constraint: Implementing and maintaining a robust digital health infrastructure requires significant financial investments.

●      Example: The 2023-24 budget has allocated just 89000 crore for health, which is much lower than the 2.5% recommended by National Health Policy. This lack of funding hinders digital aspirations.

✔     Transparency regarding patient consent: Obtaining informed consent from the patient is difficult due to a lack of awareness. When the consent process is not transparent, using the data for research or commercial function raises ethical questions.

Way forward

✔     Improve data security mechanism: The digital infrastructure must be strengthened with adequate safeguards to ensure that sensitive data is well preserved.

✔     Increase public spending: The government needs to allocate more funds for health digitization drives and for increasing the digital literacy of the people.

✔     Address interoperability issue: Proper monitoring to ensure that all the empanelled hospitals are following the same standards to facilitate interoperability.

Hence, Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission is an ambitious initiative to make India's healthcare sector more efficient. But changes on the above-mentioned lines are required to make the programme beneficial to the public.

Tags:
Social Justice

Keywords:
Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission NHP 2017 Health ID digitization of healthcare

Syllabus:
General Studies Paper 2

Topics:
Social Justice