NDHM to revolutionize healthcare

The digitization of the health information into a single database is a fundamental step toward improving public health delivery, and a milestone for issues like treatment of pandemics and everything related to biomedical research.

The entire world has been struggling to fight COVID-19 since the beginning of 2020. When such a pandemic strikes, the healthcare systems of developed and developing nations come into the limelight wherein differences in basic practices can be seen making a huge difference in quality of services.

The healthcare industry is rapidly evolving and digitizing, and healthcare professionals are constantly updating themselves with various tools to provide quality services to patients.

In India, there is an increase in the magnitude of digitization of healthcare services in various healthcare delivery institutions. In the current scenario, the trend is transitioning to a citizen-centric healthcare system from an institution-centric one. To bring about this shift, the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, announced National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) on the occasion of the 74th anniversary of India’s independence, giving every Indian citizen a unique health ID, digitized health records, as well as a registry of doctors and health facilities.

Led by the National Health Authority (NHA), NDHM is set to be India’s major step toward achieving a citizen-centric healthcare system. Unique health IDs that store digital health records of individuals will be created. It is envisioned to create a national digital health ecosystem that supports universal health coverage in an efficient, accessible, inclusive, affordable, timely, and safe manner, that provides a wide-range of data, information, and infrastructure services, duly leveraging open, interoperable, standards-based digital systems, and ensures the security, confidentiality and privacy of health-related personal information.

The implementation of NDHM is expected to significantly improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of health service delivery overall. Patients will be able to securely store and access their medical records (prescriptions, diagnostic reports and discharge summaries), and share them with healthcare providers to ensure appropriate treatment and follow-up. They will also have access to more accurate information on health facilities and service providers. Further, they will have the option to access health services remotely through tele-consultation and e-pharmacy.

NDHM will empower individuals with accurate information to enable informed decision making and increase accountability of healthcare providers. NDHM will provide choice to individuals to access both public and private health services, facilitate compliance with laid down guidelines and protocols, and ensure transparency in pricing of services and accountability for the health services being rendered.

Of course, the challenge in developing such a system is data security. The deployment of the country’s national identification number and means of payment, Aadhaar quickly hit problems of this kind, and which, if they occurred with health data, usually subject to strict privacy controls, could be a major headache for the government.

In India this kind of issue could have huge consequences, leading the country to become the world’s largest laboratory for privacy issues. National policies are being formulated to allay these concerns about healthcare records. Healthcare is set to undergo a revolution, and digitalization will contribute most to this. The adoption of NDHM in the absence of a data protection law has led for the policymakers to plan for two policies—security of health systems and privacy of personal health records.

The Indian experience could be a good way to identify the issues involved in mass rollouts of digital initiatives.