Aarogya Setu, CoWIN to get new avatar as health apps

The Centre is repurposing Aarogya Setu and CoWIN, the health apps used for monitoring and managing the Covid-19 outbreak. Aarogya Setu which was launched for handling Covid-19 in a more systematic way has been updated to function as a health and wellness app. While the Covid-19 immunisation app, CoWIN will be utilised for India’s universal immunisation programme under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission.

RS Sharma, the chief executive of the National Health Authority, said that India’s two important digital health solutions have been repurposed. The first is Aarogya Setu which has had over 240 million downloads since the Covid-19 outbreak. This app is now being repurposed as the National Health App to take care of India’s digital health issues.

“If you go to a hospital, you won’t have to stand in a line to register yourself; you can scan from the app and get the OPD card,” Sharma said as per a Hindustan Times report.

The CoWIN, on the other hand, is being repurposed to be used as an immunisation app that will help people locate and obtain the other 12 mandatory vaccines (apart from Covid) covered by the national immunisation programme, including the polio drops.

According to Sharma, the digital platforms are highly scalable as 200,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine were recorded by the digital systems on Day 1 before reaching a daily rate of 25 million doses.

The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission was introduced on September 27, 2021. The digital mission has so far reached the milestone of 10 million digitally linked health records within a year with over 2.7 million health records linked every day.

The Healthcare Professionals Registry also has about 80,000 registered healthcare professionals and at least 1,50,000 registered healthcare facilities. CNBCTV18