On July 6, the NITI Aayog released a proposal for the National Health Stack (NHS) which is envisioned as a digital infrastructure meant to serve as the backbone of the two-component Ayushman Bharat Scheme, as announced in the Union Budget 2017-18. NHS will set up a holistic electronic system for beneficiaries, doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies from the private and public sector alike. Ayushman Bharat's first component is setting up of 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres to deliver primary healthcare in the country. The second component is the National Health Protection Scheme (also being called Pradhan Matrix - Rashtriya Swasthya Suraksha Mission) to provide an annual health insurance cover of Rs. 5 lakh per family to 10 crore families, or 50 crore people. The NHS will be "built for NHPS but designed beyond NHPS" to enable development of "diverse solutions in health and their adoption by states." National Health Stack is a collection of cloud-based services. Each service provides just one capability across multiple health services, "accessible via simple open APIs compatible with global standards." It is designed "to leverage India Stack". According to the proposal, data collected through the NHS "will not only allow policy makers to experiment with policies, detect fraud in health insurance, measure outcomes and move towards smart policy making." 1. Components, design and scope of the National Health Stack Five key components: -National Health Electronic Registries: will create a single source of data for both beneficiaries and provider, incorporating existing registries, and overcome data…
