NHA invites suggestions on the way forward for National Digital Health Mission

New Delhi: The National Health Authority (NHA) has released consultation papers on two building blocks of the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) – the Health Facility Registry (HFR) and the Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) for all stakeholders to give their comments and suggestions. Both HFR and HPR are core building blocks of NDHM which are owned, developed, and maintained by the Government.

In light of the upcoming national rollout of the NDHM and the expanded scope of these registries, NHA has sought inputs from all stakeholders on the consultation papers by 13th July 2021.

The Health Facility Registry (HFR) is proposed to be the single complete, up-to-date repository of health facilities in the country and is envisioned as the primary source of information for all other databases and lists. HFR aims to facilitate the exchange of standardized data of public and private health facilities across all systems of medicine. Similarly, the Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) will be the hub of all healthcare professionals involving doctors, para-medics, nurses, midwives and community health workers (e.g. ASHAs, ANMs). Currently, the Doctors Registry exists as DigiDoctor, which is a comprehensive repository of information on doctors practicing or teaching across systems of medicine. Doctors Registry will be expanded to include various other categories of healthcare professionals. This new iteration will be referred to as the Healthcare Professionals Registry.

Since the launch of the pilot project of NDHM in August 2020 in six Union Territories, multiple rounds of consultations with different groups of stakeholders have been held for both building blocks to surface concerns and challenges in adoption of the registries. Consultation papers are aimed at further engagement with stakeholders. To ensure that the policy and development is participatory and inclusive, comments and diverse viewpoints are invited from concerned stakeholders.

Giving his views on the consultation papers, R S Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority said, “We are developing the National Digital Health Ecosystem in a consultative manner. Therefore, I urge all stakeholders to go through these papers and provide us with their valuable feedback.”

NHA is also planning to organize two public webinars shortly to provide an overview of each of the above consultation papers in the next five-seven days. The link will be shared on NDHM’s website www.ndhm.gov.in.

Full text of the consultation papers is available for download on NDHM’s website at https://ndhm.gov.in/publication/consultationpapers . Comments and feedback can be uploaded on the same link or can be emailed to [email protected]

Further set of consultation papers on related issues shall be released by the NHA soon.