Today, India, known worldwide as the 'Capital of Software', has the opportunity to lead the world in the field of digital health.
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The year 2018-19 will be engraved in the history of digital health. In 2016, India first proposed a M-Health resolution at the World Health Council (WHA). Some of those proposals were not approved that year, but in 2018 the WHA passed a resolution on digital health. So now the issue of digital health is coming up in the main agenda of the World Health Organization (WHO) and we are already seeing its effects. The 4th Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP) is a direct result of this resolution. In February this year, India convened a major summit in New Delhi, in which the Delhi Declaration for Digital Health was adopted. By doing so, India has shown the world that it can lead the world in broadening the horizons of digital health.
In 2016, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare published the Electronic Health Records Standard. From which it was made clear that India will lay a strong foundation before embarking on the journey towards digital health. In 2016, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare was in the process of setting up IHIN (India Health Information Network) on the lines of the Asia Health Information Network (AHIN). Huge homework was also done for the National Digital Health Authority (NDHA), as the issue was on the BJP's manifesto in 2014 and later the Modi government included it in the National Health Policy in 2017. However, the reshuffle of two senior bureaucrats leading the digital health department in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has made the digital health initiative on IHIN / NDHA a victim of bureaucratic red tape and politics.
GDHI is another important global health initiative. It aims to increase the acceptance of digital health globally through comparison, participation and competition. The first report on the state of digital health 2019 was published in Uganda in April this year. This annual report will have a major impact on the governments of countries eager to take a leadership role in implementing digital health care.
Also, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recently published guidelines for digital health interventions for empowering health practices. This is the result of three years of rigorous research by the World Health Organization. India is now in the process of holding a regional public consultation and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare should convene a meeting of the Central Council of Health and Family Welfare on this issue and appeal to the states to participate in the implementation of digital health systems.
India has decided to transform 150,000 rural health centers into health and welfare centers. Assuming it involves telemedicine, this is the right time to frame a legal and statutory framework for digital health, personal privacy and protection law. It is also necessary to draw up guidelines for diagnostic maintenance, IoT and wearables and promote the issue of diagnostic maintenance to provide them with a legal framework.
This is the right time for India to learn from the agility shown by the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) and to establish the National Digital Health Authority (NDHA) to reap the potential benefits of digital health. Adequate funding should also be made available to C-DAC for appointments of EHRs and for scheduling patient visits to government hospitals. These EHRs should be provided free of cost to developing countries and India should extend a helping hand for their appointments.
This strategy would also be appropriate to use the knowledge of our high quality technical manpower in developing countries. Those countries will also have access to digital devices to meet their healthcare objectives. This will be India's unprecedented assistance to developing countries to take advantage of EHRs (mobile health records may be more appropriate at that time due to low-resource mobile health convergence), and tele-medical care delivery methods to bridge the gap between drug supply problems in remote areas and cross-border medical advice. Medicine arrangements may be helpful. This will help to fill the shortage of trained medical resources to some extent.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared 2020 as the International Year of Nurses and India must ensure that nurses are at the forefront of the healthcare supply chain and make full use of technology to fulfill their role as effective watchdogs. Nurses will be able to play a major role in primary and secondary prevention, and will therefore be instrumental in saving costs due to co-malformations. As India moves towards global healthcare through the Prime Minister's Public Health Scheme (PMJAY), nurses, pharmacists and physiotherapists (as well as other related healthcare professionals) are expected to play a central role in preventive care.
India needs to pursue a diplomacy of digital health through South-South cooperation. Former President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was a visionary leader. He founded the Pan-African e-Network Project over a decade ago to promote tele-education and tele-medicine in African countries. This should be further encouraged by shifting the Department of Tele-Medicine from the Ministry of External Affairs to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, where it is recognized as an important department of the Ministry.
India has the best technical resources available and we need to make good use of OPD and IPD data in our government hospitals to develop decision support systems powered by Big Data and AI. This system can be adjusted with all developing countries, especially African countries. This system can be very useful for timely diagnosis and effective treatment. We will be able to develop methods that will ultimately affect the lives of millions of people on earth, and we will not have to make huge investments.
India is known worldwide as the capital of software. Now is the time for India to emerge as a digital health ambassador and a promising leader on the global stage in the field of digital health! There is a real need now for these efforts to be strengthened at the highest level and the rest to be facilitated on the strength of technical skills. Given that Digital India is an ambitious project of the Modi government, it would be appropriate to give so much importance to digital health.
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