New Delhi: The National Health Authority (NHA) has asked eight states to complete the registration of state-government run public health facilities on the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) platform by 30 September. Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Telangana and Delhi are yet to verify government-run health facilities for their inclusion in the Health Facility Registry (HFR). Except for Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand, all the other states have non-Bharatiya Janata Party governments. India’s top performers in terms of health indicators,
As per Niti Aayog’s ‘Performance in Health Outcomes Index’ Kerala and Tamil Nadu have also not completed their registration.
The Health Facility Registry (HFR) is one of the building blocks of the ABDM, the Central scheme that aims to create a national digital health ecosystem. It aims to be a comprehensive repository of the country’s health facilities across all systems of medicine—private and public health facilities including hospitals, clinics, pharmacies etc. The creation of HFR for all health facilities is the first step towards the digitization of the health system in the country. At present, 320,000 health facilities are registered in HFR. There is a huge difference between facilities listed on the National Health Resource Repository (NHRR), which is an older database,and those registered on HFR. NHRR was set up in 2018—also to collect data of all public and private healthcare institutions across India. This was carried out with the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence (CBHI), under the ministry of health & family welfare. ABDM has a key mandate to develop digital health IDs for citizens–although these Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) IDs are voluntarily. So far, around. 660 million health IDs have been created for citizens to enable them with exchange of medical records and accessible to doctors within the ABDM network.
