National Digital Health Mission NDHM, Feature and Importance

As an integral part of the National Digital Health Blueprint unveiled in 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the National Digital Health Mission On India’s 74th Independence Day, August 15, 2020. The National Digital Health Mission will implement the core and common digital building blocks required for healthcare and make them accessible as digital public goods to both the public and private ecosystems.

For the convenience of aspirants, we have provided details on the National Digital Health Mission, its background, implementing agency, vision, and aim of the National Digital Health Mission, salient features, components, benefits and challenges, expected outcomes, suggestions, and the way forward that is important for the UPSC IAS Exam.

The National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 has the following goal:

1. The attainment of the highest possible level of health and well-being for all ages, through a preventive and promotive health care orientation in all developmental policies, and universal access to good quality health care services without anyone having to face financial hardship as a consequence.
2. In a follow-up of the NHP’s specific goals for adopting digital technologies, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare constituted a committee headed by Shri J. Satyanarayana to develop an implementation framework for the National Health Stack. This committee produced the National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB), laying out the building blocks and an action plan to comprehensively and holistically implement digital health.
3.  Taking forward the NDHB, this document describes the broad context, rationale, scope, and implementation arrangements for a digital ecosystem for healthcare services across the country. Since the implementation is envisioned to be in a mission mode, the initiative is referred to as the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM).

National Health Policy 2017

Through this NDHM policy all the citizen’s good health care in an assured manner. The NHP 2017 strives to tackle the rising challenges arising from the ever-changing Socio-Economic, Technological, and Epidemiological situations.

Features of the Policy

In the below section, you will get to learn about the different features of the National Digital Health Mission. It is recommended you read the following points.

• Incremental assurance-based approach.
• It signifies a major change towards a comprehensive fundamental health care package.
• It envisages the provision of higher packages of assured extensive primary health care through the ‘Health and Wellness Centers.’
• In all public hospitals, it proposes free medication, diagnostics, and emergency and essential health care services to give access and fiscal protection.
• It also envisages the inclusion of AYUSH systems encompassing cross referrals, co-location, and integral practices across systems of medicine.

Health Expenditure: The policy proposes raising public health spending to 2.5% of the GDP by 2025.

Implementation of the Mission

NDHM is a collaborative initiative between many ministries/departments. Given the inter-linkages and comprehensiveness of the Mission, the following governance structure is proposed for the implementation of NDHM

As per the National Digital Health Blueprint, the mission will keep two separate arms – one for regulation and the other for implementation and operational management.

Vision of National Digital Health Mission

In order to support universal health coverage in an effective, accessible, inclusive, affordable, timely, and safe manner, a national digital health ecosystem must be established. This ecosystem must provide a wide range of data, information, and infrastructure services while appropriately utilizing open, interoperable, standards-based digital systems and guaranteeing the security, confidentiality, and privacy of personal health information.

Aim of the National Digital Health Mission

1. To establish state-of-the-art digital health systems, manage the core digital health data, and the infrastructure required for its seamless exchange;
2. To establish registries at an appropriate level to create a single source of truth for clinical establishments, healthcare professionals, health workers, drugs, and pharmacies
3. To enforce the adoption of open standards by all national digital health stakeholders
4. To create a system of personal health records, based on international standards, easily accessible to individuals healthcare professionals, and service providers, based on
individual’s informed consent
5. To promote the development of enterprise-class health application systems with a special focus on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals for health;
6. To adopt the best principles of cooperative federalism while working with the States and Union Territories for the realization of the vision
7. To ensure that the healthcare institutions and professionals in the private sector participate actively with public health authorities in the building of the NDHM, through a combination of prescription and promotion
8. To ensure national portability in the provision of health services
9. To promote the use of clinical decision support (CDS) systems by health professionals and practitioners
10. To promote better management of the health sector by leveraging health data analytics and medical research.

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