Ayushman Bharat looks to deliver public health economically using technology and EHR.

Published by Dileep V S on January 18, 2019January 18, 2019

Ayushman Bharat is the world’s largest health insurance program and has been initiated by the Government of India. It is an ambitious project that will provide easy asses to healthcare for 500 million people of the country. It is an initiative to improve the primary healthcare in the country, especially for the underprivileged.

However, the program will reach the zenith of success only when the Government of India relies on modern technology to record, secure and share information to manage healthcare services and operations. Though it is a long way from now, tiny steps forward now can take this program to the next level. The world has realized this and have moved forward to digitize healthcare and it is now our turn to bring in technology and revolutionize healthcare in India.

Effective use of EHR in Ayushman Bharat

EHR came to India in 2013 with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) adopting the Indian EHR standards in September 2013. Since then, the idea has been improving and evolving in leaps and bounds. Now is the time to accept it completely and use it to amplify the Ayushman Bharat program. EHR enables the management of a patients’ records of his/her treatment and diagnosis digitally so that it is accessible to hospitals, clinics, labs and insurance companies throughout the patient’s lifetime. EHR enables the delivery of better care more economically and in the adoption of personalized and preventive healthcare practices.

Building ecosystem with EHR

Though EHR is the need of the hour, it faces many challenges to keep up with the vast and order-less state of the Indian healthcare system. We need to adopt EHR across private and public health care institutions to create a splendid future for Indian healthcare . Other than in major cities, most of the people of India rely on public institutions for their healthcare needs. The whole of our public health system suffers from the lack of adoption of EHR. In order to build an EHR based health ecosystem and make this program operational in a larger and better level, the public institutions also need to digitize their system and the government should play a prime role to make that happen.

EHR for privacy of information

Appropriate use of digital tools such as EHR is important even to secure data and privacy of the persons. EHR is a critical component of technology enabled healthcare. With EHR, we can enable privacy of clinical data and ensure that the data is used only with the consent of the patient. Each of us will have complete ownership over our clinical data and the authority to ensure that our clinical data and can be used only upon prior approval.

Ayushman Bharat is expected to leverage the proposed National Health Stack(NHS). The NHS will create a framework that will interact with various health applications and systems to transfer data from one another. It is an idea that could change the lives of large populations that are currently excluded from healthcare benefits of the existing ecosystem. If EHR and Ayushman Bharat program go hand in hand, it has astonishing potential to create wonders for people and in the medical sector of India.

We at HealtheLife have been working to create tools to make EHR adoption simple and painless. we have designed EHR.Network and AyushEHR to help healthcare practitioners and establishments get on to the EHR adoption bandwagon and become prepared for Ayushman Bharat.