Rahul Dev, Patent Attorney and Technology Business Lawyer shares a deep understanding of the national digital health blueprint and emphasis on the need for a concrete legal policy
India is in critical need of a reliable and affordable framework to manage public healthcare. The present challenges faced due to the coronavirus are a glaring reminder that a robust public healthcare framework is imperative for the stability and the growth of a nation.
Although the pandemic has slowed down India’s business growth, India is perceived as one of the fastest-growing economies. In order to spur growth and development, India needs to introduce and implement initiatives that ensure a healthy workforce, improve the public healthcare framework and most importantly integrate public and private healthcare resources.
In July 2019, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare released the National Digital Health Blueprint in the public domain and invited comments from various stakeholders, including the general public. This blueprint aims at establishing and managing the core digital health data and provide the appropriate infrastructure required for its continuous exchange. This evolution of Indian healthcare can be achieved by supporting the implementation of open standards by all the stakeholders in the National Digital Health ecosystem.
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Understanding the need to introduce the National Digital Health Blueprint
This National Digital Health Blueprint is an extension of the National Health Policy of 2017 (NHP 2017) that was formulated to provide universal healthcare to all citizens of India based on digital technologies for achieving higher efficiency and effectiveness.
In 2018, the NITI Aayog introduced the National Health Stack (NHS), which is a digital arrangement aimed at developing a clearer and sturdier health insurance system.
In essence, the NHS covers multiple mechanisms, including, an electronic national health registry that would function as a single foundation of health data for the nation. Another mechanism includes a coverage and claims platform to function as the building blocks for robust health protection schemes, thereby allowing for the horizontal and vertical expansion of schemes such as Ayushman Bharat by the states, and further allowing a robust system of fraud detection.
In addition, the NHS also aims to provide a Federated Personal Health Records (PHR) system to provide the citizens with access to their health data, and further facilitating the accessibility of the health data for medical research, which is crucial for evolving the understanding of human health.
Furthermore, an interesting mechanism of the NHS includes the introduction of National Health Analytics (NHA). The NHA provides an inclusive data-sharing platform covering various health schemes, and sustaining this platform for smart policymaking and regulation by way of improved techniques, such as, for example, by enhanced projecting analytics.
To ensure that various aspects of the NHS are fully connected and prevent the accumulation of detached silos, the NHS further includes the introduction of supplementary horizontal systems with a unique digital health ID, health data language, and supply chain control via health programmes.
Keeping the above initiatives in mind, the NDHB is a constructive document that has been introduced for the application of the NHS. The underlying idea is to make a national digital health ecosystem that supports universal health coverage in a competent, available, comprehensive, reasonable, opportune, and safe manner, through the provision of an extensive collection of data, information, and infrastructure services.
Source: Express Healthcare
