Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission Completes a Transformative 3-Year Journey towards Enabling Digital Health

On 27th September 2024, the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), a key component of Ayushman Bharat (AB), a flagship scheme of Government of India (GoI), which emerged from the National Health Policy 2017, successfully completed 3 years of implementation.

• It was launched by Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi on 27th September, 2021 with the objective to revolutionize the country’s digital healthcare ecosystem to enhance healthcare accessibility, efficiency, and transparency.
• It is being implemented by the National Health Authority (NHA) under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).

Key Features of ABDM:

i.Unique Health Identification(ID)for citizens: Under the ABDM, a unique health Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Account Identifier (ABHA ID) is assigned to every individual, which helps in storing and managing the health records of an individual securely.

Note: ABHA number is a 14-digit number that will uniquely identifie an individual in India’s digital healthcare ecosystem.

ii.Health Professionals Registry (HPR): It is a comprehensive repository of all healthcare professionals involved in providing healthcare services across both modern and traditional systems of medicine. It allows them to get connected to the digital health ecosystem of India.

iii.Health Facility Registries (HFR): It is also a comprehensive repository of all health facilities of the country across various systems of medicine, including both private and public health facilities such as: hospitals, clinics, diagnostic laboratories and imaging centers, pharmacies, among others.

iv.Health Information Exchange and Consent Manager (HIE-CM): This feature empowers citizens to securely access and share their health records, which further ensures that data sharing is driven by informed consent.

v.Unified Health Interface (UHI): It provides the discovery and delivery of health services, thus streamlining healthcare interactions and enhancing service accessibility.

vi.National Health Claim Exchange (NHCX): It optimizes the insurance payment ecosystem, which helps in simplifying and expediting the claim process.

vii.Data Privacy and Security: The ABDM is designed in alignment with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act 2023), which ensures the security, confidentiality, and secure sharing of patient related health information, which are the integral part of this initiative.

viii.Interoperability: The 3 important features of the ABDM which facilitate interoperability are: HIE-CM, NHCX, and UHI.

ix.Transparency: It provides option to individuals to access both public and private health services, facilitate compliance with guidelines and protocols framed under ABDM, and ensure transparency in pricing of services and accountability for the health services being provided.

Key Initiatives under ABDM:

i.Scan and Share: A Quick Response (QR)-code based Outpatient Department (OPD) registration service, enable the patients to scan the QR code of the facility and share their demographic details. This initiative helps to minimize the long queues at the registration counter and also minimizes the entry of incomplete and inaccurate data.

• It has registered more than 5 crore OPD tokens, thus halved the waiting time i.e. from1 hour to half an hour (30 minutes), saving 2.5 crore man-hours.

ii.Digital Health Incentive Scheme (DHIS): It was introduced with effect from 1st January, 2023, providing financial incentives to boost adoption and promote the ecosystem to participate in the ABDM initiative.

• It offers the opportunity to earn incentives of maximum 4 crores and has gained great response from both private and public health sectors.
• In June 2024, the Government of India (GoI) has decided to extend the DHIS by a year until 30th June, 2025 (or till funds for DHIS are available).

iii.Mircrosites for Private Sector Adoption: This initiative was launched with the main objective of addressing various challenges in ABDM adoption, especially for private sector providers, and has successfully operationalised 106 microsites , breaching the initial target of 100.

iv.End to End ABDM Adoption Pilot: This initiative aimed to digitize public and private facilities pan-India across different facility levels through end-to-end adoption. It also aims to make these facilities into model ABDM facilities that will act as a benchmark for future digitization efforts.

Key Milestones Achieved under ABDM:

i.So far, more than 67 crore ABHA have been created. Also, over 42 crore health records have been linked to ABHA, which enable for seamless access to medical histories and enhancing healthcare delivery.

ii.More than 236 private entities including labs, pharmacies, digital solution companies have been integrated with the ABDM ecosystem, which will help in achieving interoperability.

iii.Also, 3.3 lakh health facilities and 4.7 lakh healthcare professionals have been successfully registered in the NHPR.

• Apart from the launch of NHPR, NHA has developed various other portals to strengthen the healthcare ecosystem such as: the National Medical Register (NMR) for the National Medical Commission (NMC) and the National Dental Register (NDR) for the National Dental Council (NDC).
• At present, there are over 1.3 lakh facilities are ABDM-enabled, which includes over 17, 000 private facilities.

iv.As per the GoI data, public sector institutions like: All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi and AIIM Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh (MP) have emerged as top performers in generating Scan and Share OPD registrations.

Other Key initiatives under ABDM:

i.ABDM has been able to drive transformation in the healthcare sector by fostering various partnerships to enhance digital healthcare services like: It has collaborated with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh (UP) for the development of digital public goods in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for healthcare.

• ABDM has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) to promote digital health education into medical curricula.

ii.ABDM has driven transformation through training and raising awareness among various stakeholders to better understand and adopt digital health practices like: NHA has introduced a Whatsapp Chatbot, acting as a user-friendly platform to train stakeholders involved in ABDM.

iii.It has initiated various initiatives which are advocating for the integration of digital health as a critical component of healthcare, for instance, the National Accreditation Board of Hospitals (NABH) launched the 1st edition of its Digital Health Standards for HIS/EMR systems, aimed at boosting the adoption of digital health technologies in India.

• Also, the eSwasthya Dham portal has been integrated with ABDM, which has now extended its benefits to Char Dham Yatris.

iv.Under ABDM, the Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) is being made available to healthcare professionals to facilitate the adoption of digital health practices.

• It aims to improve clinical decision-making, enhance patient outcomes, and streamline healthcare delivery.

Naga Hospital Authority Kohima Recognised as Best Performing Hospital under Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY

On 30th September 2024, Kohima (Nagaland)-based Naga Hospital Authority Kohima (NHAK) was recognised as the best performing hospital in Kohima district under the Ayushman Bharat Pradan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY).

• This recognition was conferred to NHAK during a program commemorating the 6th anniversary of PM-JAY and the 3rd anniversary of ABDM at the Conference Hall, Office of the Deputy Commissioner (DC) in Kohima district, Nagaland.
• NHAK has witnessed the highest registration and transaction under PM-JAY, with 2,558 patients treated and 1,601 beneficiaries registered.

About National Health Authority (NHA):
It is the apex body responsible for implementing GoI’s flagship scheme called AB PM-JAY. It is the successor of the National Health Agency, which has been functioning as a registered society since 23rd May, 2018. Later, the National Health Agency was reconstituted as NHA on 2nd January, 2019.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)-  LS Changsan
Headquarters- New Delhi, Delhi