Healthcare Data

Systems:

National Healthstack1

The National Health Stack (NHS) was proposed by Niti Aayog as an infrastructural component of the Ayushman Bharat Scheme. The NHS infrastructure consists primarily of a cloud based electronic system for medical professionals, healthcare entities/organisations, and public and private insurance companies. The data collected through NHS will also be used to fuel future policy making. The key components of the NHS infrastructure include Electronic Health Data Registries (a uniform database of user health data for all entities involved), Health Analytics Initiatives, and a Digital Health ID system.

Health Management Information Systems (HMIS)2

A web based Health MIS (HMIS) portal was launched in October, 2008 to facilitate data capturing at District and lower levels. The HMIS portal has led to faster flow of information and almost all districts in the country are now reporting data on a regular basis. It specifies the information collected, use of information, data analysis performers, etc.

National E-Health Authority (NeHA)3

It is proposed that a National e-Health Authority shall be set up through an act of Parliament although no such draft has been made available yet. The role of the authority will be to promote, regulate and set standards for regulation of e-health services in the country.

NeHA will be the nodal authority that will be responsible for development of an Integrated Health Information System (including Telemedicine and mHealth) in India,

This includes:

Formulation and management of all health informatics standards
Laying down data management, privacy & security policies, standards and guidelines in accordance with statutory provisions;
setting up of state health records repositories and health information exchanges (HIEs);
To deal with privacy and confidentiality aspects of Electronic Health Records (EHR).

Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS)4

MCTS is a web enabled name based system to monitor and ensure delivery of full spectrum of services to all pregnant women and children. It assigns a number to every child and mother to track their health services availed. It specifies what data is collected, use of data, data analysis conducted, accessibility to the information, etc.

Telemedicine5

Telemedicine, an information and communication technology based tool, has the potential to assist in electronic delivery of diagnostic and healthcare services to remote rural population even in the absence of physical infrastructure in place thus can create a platform to network India. The scope of the project includes development of technology platform for harvest, compilation, storage (Database of public health information) at regional district hub and central data centre at MOH & FW, archive and distribution across network.

NHRM Smart Card6

Under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) Scheme, every beneficiary family is issued a biometric enabled smart card containing their fingerprints and photographs, called the NHRM Smart Card.

State Governments must prepare and submit the beneficiary data taken from the latest Census reports (2011) in an electronic format specified by Government of India. The format requires details of all the family members including name, father or husband’s name for the head of household, age, gender and relationship with the head of household. The Central Government then assigns a Unique Reference Number (URN). The scheme specifies the data collected, transmission of information7, data analysis, and relevant technology.