Bengaluru will soon house a technology centre for the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), announced R.S. Sharma, CEO of National Health Authority (NHA) on Monday.
Addressing presspersons on the sidelines of NHA-NASSCOM Conclave 2022 on “Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission – Revolutionizing Digital Health” here on Monday, Mr. Sharma said with the opening of the tech centre, ABDM will have its presence in Bengaluru.
Like UIDAI
Pointing out that the centre would be on the lines of UIDAI centre in Bengaluru, Mr. Sharma said many technology teams under ABDM are working from Bengaluru. “They will now be asked to work from this tech centre. This will give a larger push for ABDM and the State of Karnataka. It will basically be the State office of ABDM in Bengaluru,” he said.
State Health Commissioner Randeep D., who is also the State Mission Director for ABDM in Karnataka, said the centre will be located in Arogya Soudha. “Officials from NHA will visit Arogya Soudha to see if the available placeis suitable for the tech centre. Their tech team members, who are otherwise housed in Bengaluru as part of ABDM, will work from here. This gives a much larger push for ABDM and Karnataka,” he said.
With 800 integrators and over 40 digital health service applications successfully integrated into it, ABDM aims to digitise healthcare delivery by building an equitable, accessible and inclusive ecosystem that rides on collaborative efforts of the government and private sector.
“India is standing at the forefront of the digital revolution. The world has seen the success story of our country with the largest digital identity programme, record adoption of digital payments and more recently, a national vaccination programme via the CoWIN platform. The ABDM aims to replicate this success in healthcare delivery,” said Mr. Sharma.
The conclave, organised in a hybrid mode, saw the participation of over 400 stakeholders and industry veterans from the healthcare and technology sector as well as the investor community.
Lessons from COVID
Speaking at the conclave, Health and Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar said, “During our fight against COVID, we saw the importance of digital services for healthcare delivery. The impact that teleconsultation, online appointment bookings, readily available health information and access to specialists had on people was unprecedented.”
“Under ABDM, everyone would be provided with a Health ID. Along with it, a comprehensive registry of all the doctors – from superspecialists to general physicians – will be collated. With this, the problem of quacks will also be eliminated,” he said.
Key challenges
State Health Commissioner Randeep D., who chaired a panel discussion on ‘Innovation and Digital Health Solutions’, said some of the key problems that the Health Department faces include timely alerts on disease burden with geographic distribution, portability of records during referral and accessible and timely diagnosis. “We hope to address these issues through ABDM,” he said.
