India has made rapid strides digitally & is continuously growing its digital footprint. Digitisation is increasingly touching all aspects of our life. Aided by the internet boom in the last decade, National Health Authority (NHA) Chairman Dr RS Sharma feels Digital Health is not an idea, it’s time has now come. 

Speaking today at the Internet Association of India’s, India Digital Summit, NHA Chairman said, “United Health Interface (UHI), which has the potential to transform India’s health ecosystem with interoperability of health services, will go live this week.

When healthcare converges with digitisation, three parameters will improve, Access, Affordability, and Quality according to NHA Chairman. He further said,. “India has 600 million-plus smartphones and cheapest internet in the world. Digital availability of doctors will balance things out & patients will have to pay less for Digital Consultation.” It is also expected that Digital Infrastructure will take care of pre hospitalisation stage. 

Everything will be there in a digital record, so more transparency. Digital health records will make things easy to share past records. 

On privacy concerns, NHA said Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission is based on consent-based data sharing. Privacy by design concept has been incorporated by the Government of India. 

Dr RS Sharma said, “Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission will become very big in 2022, but this depends on partners because govt can’t do this alone. Private and Public sector partnership will deliver better healthcare to India.”

However, Dr RS Sharma feel that the Digitisation of Health Records is a big challenge. “Need to give value proposition to every stakeholder, from doctors to labs etc. We will also form Health Claims Exchange.”