17-Dec-2022: Over 4 crore health records of citizens digitized and linked with their Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) numbers under Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM)
The flagship scheme Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) is making steady progress in building a comprehensive digital health ecosystem for the country. With over 4 crore digital health records linked to the ABHA accounts of individuals, the scheme has crossed a significant milestone. More than 29 crore citizens have generated their unique Ayushman Bharat Health Accounts (ABHA) so far.
With their health records linked to their ABHA accounts digitally, citizens will be able to access and manage these records as per convenience. This enables citizens to create a comprehensive medical history across various healthcare providers thereby improving clinical decision-making. Further, the citizens can also share relevant health records with ABDM registered healthcare providers digitally.
Elaborating on ABDM’s role in digitizing health records, Dr. R. S. Sharma, CEO, NHA said – “As the implementing agency for ABDM, National Health Authority is working closely with different stakeholders to ensure that the benefits of digital health services can be availed by more citizens. We’re planning to launch an incentive scheme for health facilities such as hospitals, clinics, diagnostic labs etc. to further promote digitization of health records. We’re also encouraging different health locker applications to integrate with ABDM so that citizens get more choice for storing and managing their digital records.”
Adding further he said – “With continuous focus on digitization of health records, we aim to achieve paperless medical consultations and thereby more accuracy in each transaction between the patient and healthcare service provider.”
This digital linking of individual’s health records with ABHA is being carried out extensively across different health facilities of the country with the support of State Governments. The leading contributors to ABHA-linked health records include Government of Andhra Pradesh, Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY, Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) scheme under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, eHospital and CoWIN among others.
2-Aug-2022: Measures to accelerate Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) adoption in the country
An individual can create their Ayushman Bharat Health Account (number) (ABHA) which is a unique identifier for a citizen in the health ecosystem. Presently, ABHA can be created by an individual through their Aadhaar number or driving license.
ABHA will help the individual to link and share their digital health records with consent across multiple systems and stakeholders. This helps create their longitudinal health records across different healthcare providers which facilitates better delivery of healthcare to them.
Ministry has taken multiple measures to accelerate ABHA adoption in the country. National Health Authority (NHA) is collaborating with several government health programmes, government health solutions/applications, private integrators to accelerate creation of ABHA. For ABHA creation in remote locations with limited or no internet connectivity, ABDM has also rolled out the feature of offline ABHA creation.