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NHA calls for centralisation of drugs database

National Health Authority (NHA), the apex government nodal agency for implementation of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), has released a consultation paper on Drug Registry, a nationally recognized registry of all the drugs across various systems of medicines that are sold in the Indian market.

The registry is intended to be a single, up-to-date, centralised repository of all the drugs across all systems of medicine which are approved and are available in the Indian market. The Drug Registry application is proposed be designed using open-source technologies and will be interoperable.

The government said that it is being conceptualised as the primary source of information for all other databases and lists and facilitates the exchange of standardised data across all systems of medicine, from allopathy to Ayurveda.

“A central database of the approved drugs sold in the market will serve multiple benefits including free availability of verified information for all drugs, simplified regulatory flows, smoother supply chain management, streamlined insurance claim processing, innovations in clinical decisions, disease management and assurance models,” said the draft paper.

“Initially, the goal is to comprehensively capture relevant and accurate details of all drugs sold in India. Over time, the drug registry is envisaged to help smoothen the inventory flow throughout the drug supply chain, improving the quality and patient trust and ultimately enabling patient-centric digitization by ensuring machine readability of prescribed drugs,” the draft paper read.

The government has noted that different authorities have different responsibilities and they collect data at different times of the product lifecycle, the data is present in different forms with multiple regulatory authorities, which in turn leads to a lack of a central database on the approved drugs sold in the market.

This lack of visibility and centralisation creates certain challenges for multiple stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem. Currently, medical IT systems use their master database of drugs, their constituents, and codes to identify individual drugs. This leads to problems in the inter-operation of medical records and information between the systems. The lack of a single source of truth for medical drugs, generics and substances adds to the problem, the document argued.

“Through Drug Registry, ABDM aims to provide a standardized, comprehensive set of verified data on all the approved drugs marketed in the country that would enable a more efficient regulatory process. To enable inclusivity and widen the perspectives on the table,” said Dr R S Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority. Business Today

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