The National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) aims to develop the backbone necessary to support the integrated digital health infrastructure of the country. It will bridge the existing gap amongst different stakeholders of Healthcare ecosystem through digital highways.
VISION
Universal Health Coverage
NDHM shall create a seamless online platform “through the provision of a wide-range of data, information and infrastructure services, duly leveraging open, interoperable, standards-based digital systems” while ensuring the security, confidentiality and privacy of health-related personal information.
To strengthen the accessibility and equity of health services, including continuum of care with citizen as the owner of data, in a holistic healthcare programme approach leveraging IT & associated technologies and support the existing health systems in a ‘citizen-centric’ approach, the NDHM envisages the following specific objectives:
The National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 has the following goal:
- “The attainment of the highest possible level of health and wellbeing for all at all ages, through a preventive and promotive health care orientation in all developmental policies, and universal access to good quality health care services without anyone having to face financial hardship as a consequence.”
- In a follow-up of the NHP’s specific goals for adopting digital technologies, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare constituted a committee headed by Shri J. Satyanarayana to develop an implementation framework for the National Health Stack. This committee produced the National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB), laying out the building blocks and an action plan to comprehensively and holistically implement digital health.
- Taking forward the NDHB, this document describes the broad context, rationale, scope, and implementation arrangements for a digital ecosystem for healthcare services across the country. Since the implementation is envisioned to be in a mission mode, the initiative is referred to as the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM).
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.
To strengthen the accessibility and equity of health services, including continuum of care with citizen as the owner of data, in a holistic healthcare programme approach leveraging IT & associated technologies and support the existing health systems in a ‘citizen-centric’ approach, the NDHM envisages the following specific objectives:
- To establish state-of-the-art digital health systems, to manage the core digital health data, and the infrastructure required for its seamless exchange;
- To establish registries at appropriate level to create single source of truth in respect of clinical establishments, healthcare professionals, health workers, drugs and pharmacies;
- To enforce adoption of open standards by all national digital health stakeholders;
- To create a system of personal health records, based on international standards, easily accessible to individuals and healthcare professionals and services providers, based on individual’s informed consent;
- To promote development of enterprise-class health application systems with a special focus on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals for health;
- To adopt the best principles of cooperative federalism while working with the States and Union Territories for the realization of the vision;
- To ensure that the healthcare institutions and professionals in the private sector participate actively with public health authorities in the building of the NDHM, through a combination of prescription and promotion;
- To ensure national portability in the provision of health services;
- To promote the use of clinical decision support (CDS) systems by health professionals and practitioners;
- To promote a better management of the health sector leveraging health data analytics and medical research;
- To provide for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of governance at all levels;
- To support effective steps being taken for ensuring quality of healthcare; and
- To strengthen existing health information systems, by ensuring their conformity with the defined standards and integration with the proposed NDHM.
The current strong public digital infrastructure—including that related to Aadhaar, Unified Payments Interface and wide reach of the Internet and mobile phones (JAM trinity) —provides a strong platform for establishing the building blocks of NDHM. The existing ability to digitally identify people, doctors, and health facilities, facilitate electronic signatures, ensure non-repudiable contracts, make paperless payments, securely store digital records, and contact people provide opportunities to streamline healthcare information through digital management.