"IMA blatantly said that we won't participate because there is no consent from patient to doctor on technical issues (of telemedicine). I am raising this point intentionally again because there is Supreme Court verdict that there should not be telephonic consultation and here we are proposing that this should be teleconsultation," a participant said during the Open House conducted by the NHA to discuss the last three consultation papers of the National Digital Health Mission. These papers were on the Unified Health Interface and Health Professionals and Facilities' Registries- three components that form key building blocks of the government's digital health mission which will enable not only appointments but also a number of teleconsultations and the creation of an individual's lifelong, longitudinal health record. This is the second story in a two-part series on events that took place during the Open House conducted by the National Health Authority on the Unified Health Interface, Health Professional's and Facilities' Registry. You can read the first story here. In brief, what happened: During the nearly two hour long meeting, multiple stakeholders put forth questions and comments that reflected long-standing issues that the NHA needs to address and clarify on for the various stakeholders. Atleast one public consultation meeting has taken place for each of the three papers and it has been four months since they were released. While the NHA provided a statistical topic-wise overview of all the inputs it had received so far which we elaborate on later in the story; however…
