Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission: Technology-assisted healthcare

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Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (Abdm – renamed previously named ‘National Digital Health Mission’), was launched in August last year, working to unite, various stakeholders in the Indian health ecosystem through digital facilities. Mission, where citizens can obtain a unique 14-digit health identification number, will create a digital health ecosystem with personal health ID for each individual, unique identifiers for doctors and health care providers, and personal records. ABDM makes opt-in and opt-out from database decisions on user policy.

As we know, but not enough attention – paper-based medical records such as recipes, laboratory reports, hospital records, release summaries, and health insurance papers may be torn apart, faded, wrong place, etc. It’s much better to keep this digital note.

As an evolution needed because of covid pandemics, two non-positioned projects – health services online and creating a unique health ID (UHID) – encouraging the possibility of making one digital locker to save health records. The UHID network will operate such as UPI which creates a payment system that does not depend on the banking system; Help users to receive and send health reports and doctor access, laboratories, etc. Their choice

Typical Health journey

Typical Travel Health Care Every individual has the following components: Symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, support for maintenance, post-treatment care, health records for follow-up visits. Ecosystem includes patients / doctors / hospitals / clinics.

During covid panic, we see residents using cellphones and video conferencing to access doctors and health care. With access to internet data and cellular phones available throughout India, every small city or village can benefit from telemedicine and e-pharmacies as the first step. Primary health centers in most of these places do not have doctors (because of lack of replacement staff) or doctors who are less experienced, which may or may not be able to overcome all queries. Even in the case of a doctor with relevant skills available, if he needs to refer this case to a specialist, where and how does the reference? Integrated e-healthcare can reduce medical access costs to patients, and also save time and travel.

Learnings from other nations’ attempts

Various countries have tried e-health initiatives and have become a collection of mixed results.

The UK National Health Services (NHS) is one that first uses a digital system to make patient records accessible by doctors throughout the UK. The effort failed because it did not overcome the problem of confidentiality of data and trust from the medical community.

Both the US and Australia tried a digital health care system driven by the free market, with several layers of complex health insurance blankets. The US has not been able to have inclusive coverage of all its citizens in the e-health care process. A study of sharing that more than 90 percent of US patients complained about the lack of data sharing and that faxes and telephone calls remained a means of choice of choice in the Ministry of Health throughout the country which created the internet that found the internet. To overcome this problem, the interoperability rule was introduced in 2020. However, on July 1, 2021, only two of the policies of the May 2020 interoperability and the final rule of patient access had been valid.

In the world of data-centric, India seems to lead the game with policy like ABDM. Developing communication languages in the ecosphere of digital health can cause unexpected problems in India given the country’s diversity and the lack of chronic doctors, especially in public health centers – the main source of medical care for a large number of people in this country. Poor internet speed can make heavy proposition entry data for rural health service providers.

Concerns: Data governance, Cyber Security & privacy

Data governance is the process and organization of procedures used to manage and protect their data. In this context, data can mean all or a subset of digital assets and / or hard copy companies. In the health care industry, that data is patient records, blood test results, ECG, MRI, billing records, drug prescriptions, and other personal medical information. The data governance in Healthcare is about each piece of data such as the patient’s ID number, blood pressure reading, etc.

The National Health Authority (NHA) has issued a national health data management policy, which aims to rule how data will be handled in an ecosystem that aims at ABDM to build. The famous Putasewamy judgment is held that information privacy is a fundamental right, which includes health data. The proposed personal data protection bill categorizes health data as sensitive personal data, which means there is an increase in protection that will look for more liabilities from funds of FIDUARIAR. Data will be invited, to protect people’s privacy. The government will not have access to data or have data. This will be guided by the Data Protection Act.

There is a cry because it uses blockchain in this effort. Blockchain is a strong technology to allow sharing and access secure data between many parties. This is the main challenge in digital health, where the privacy and security of medical data is the most important. In Blockchain, Health ID can work as a private key used to encrypt and decrypt data distributed between senders and recipients. The private key will allow patient anonymity to the public health registry (PHR), which can be blockchain. Authorization for government or private entities to use data can be provided using this private key, by patients.

Blockchains can help digital health by making it easier to share data safely, with patient approval, in all health care systems that are very fragmented. This can help in building transparency in all supply chains, credential verification throughout the chain, facilitating efficient remote monitoring, insurance claims, and other supply chain settlements that can be easily validated and permitted.

Health data, which is considered ‘sensitive personal information’, is vulnerable to cyber threats. After the data protection law is available, an adequate security framework can increase user trust in the system. Between October 1 and November 2520, more than seven million virtual world attacks were recorded in the Indian health sector, including vaccine makers and hospitals, according to a report by the Cyberpeace Foundation.