On August 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the National Digital Health Mission, a project that has been a long time in the making. Here is everything you need to know about the mission. What is the National Digital Health Mission? The mission seeks to create a digital health architecture, using health IDs, unique identifiers for doctors and health facilities, personal health records, and telemedicine and e-pharmacies, among other components. Under the National Digital Health Mission, “every Indian will be given a health ID”, which will contain a person’s medical history, including “all tests, every disease, which doctor gave you which medicine, when, what were your reports” and will also include doctors’ appointment, payments, and so on, PM Narendra Modi said on August 15. The mission is made of six key components — Health ID, DigiDoctor, Health Facility Registry, Personal Health Records, e-pharmacy, and telemedicine, the NHA’s statement said. “All of these digital products except e-pharmacy and telemedicine have been deployed and are up and running,” it added. The National Digital Health Mission “aims to liberate citizens from the challenges of finding the right doctors, seeking an appointment with them, payment of consultation fee, making several rounds of hospitals for prescription sheets, among several others”, the National Health Authority said in a statement soon after PM Modi’s announcement. The Mission will let users / patients access both public and private health services. The mission will “have a national footprint and will enable seamless portability across the country through a Health…
