Unique health ID plan
The world is currently on the best route of development – digitalisation. The world has changed now, the things which took so long previously now can be done with a click, thank to the process of digitalisation, and health id is one significant part of it. It has helped the world to save their precious time by making every process quicker and accessible from every corner of the world. A decade ago, there was not much digitalisation in our country. Most of the work was done through long paperwork only and took a lot of time.
However, investments have been constantly made in the country for making steps towards the development of digital infrastructure in the country and all the investments have resulted in success till now. The path of digitalisation is very important for the country to develop and compete with the big nations worldwide. In our country, many schemes are launched every year to make progress towards the digitalisation of the country.
In today’s article, we will be discussing one such scheme of the government which will surely benefit the process of digitalisation in the country- the Unique Health ID under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission. What is it and how will it help the country, we shall discuss all this in today’s article.
On Monday, which was the 27th of September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission. This was launched to primarily focus on the digitalisation of the healthcare sector of our country which is not digitalised much as of now. Our Prime Minister said that the mission has the potential to bring revolutionary changes in the healthcare sector of the country. The mission launched recently aims to develop digitalisation infrastructure in the health sector of the country. Under this mission, not only a unique health ID for every citizen, but will also provide for digital healthcare professionals and facilities registry.
What is the Unique health ID?
If any individual wants to be a part of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, the person must create a Unique Health ID. This is a randomly generated 14 digit number that will hold a lot of information in it. The major three purposes for which the Health ID will be broadly used are as follows- unique identification of the individual, the process of authentication and will carry all the health records of the individual across multiple systems and stakeholders.
However, this should be kept in our mind that all this information will be stored and used with the complete consent of the individual. You might be wondering how someone can generate a Unique Health ID, well, we have the answer for you.
The process to get yourself a unique health ID is very simple. Any person can get a Unique Health ID by self-registering on the portal provided by the government or by downloading the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) app available on both the Playstore and the Appstore. Moreover, if an individual fails to register by any of these, she can visit the nearest participating health facility, which may include government or private health centres, wellness centres and community centres of the government across the country.
Moreover, there is another requirement that must be fulfilled by the individual while making a Unique Health ID.
The beneficiary of the ID will have to make a Personal Health Record address too. This is done in order to maintain the management of consent and for the future sharing of all the health records. You might be wondering now what is a Personal Health Record (PHR) address? Let us discuss this now.
A Personal Health Record address is just a simple username that is self-generated by the user at the time of ID generation. The user has to sign in using this username into a Health Information Exchange and Consent manager. Consent is a top tier requirement and therefore this becomes a must. Any beneficiary would have to link its Unique Health ID with a consent manager in order to enable the sharing of data related to the health records of the individual. This process will ensure the privacy of the individual and the person will know who has the information related to its healthcare records and who can utilise it.
What is Health Information Exchange and Consent Manager? It is just an application that enables the sharing and linking of the personal health records of the Individual. As per the current condition, any user can use its Health ID to sign up on the HIE-CM and therefore give consent for using the personal health records of the individual. However, it is expected that in some time, there will be multiple consent managers available for the individual to choose from. This will give wider choice to the individual and will also keep the faith in them in the process of giving consent.
What are the requirements for generating a Unique Health ID?
Well, the requirements for creating a unique health ID aren’t much. As of now, the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission supports the creation of Health ID through mobile phones and Aadhar cards. However, as per the official updates on the website as well as on the reports, the mission will, later on, support the creation of Unique Health ID through Pan Card and license too, which will surely help the people.
As of now, the individual would be required to give the details of name, year of birth, sex and mobile number/Aadhar number. If you are wondering whether the Aadhar card is necessary, the answer is a complete no. It is just a voluntary choice of the individual and he/she can either use a mobile number or Aadhar number for the generation of a Unique Health ID. Therefore, making it a very simple process.
Let us say a person opts for an Aadhar card for the creation of the health ID. The person would have to put the Aadhar number on the portal and will be sent an OTP on the mobile phone linked to the Aadhar card in order to verify the details. What If a person has not linked her mobile number to the Aadhar card? In that case, the person would have to visit the nearest facility which is authorised to opt for biometric verification. After the data gets verified, the person will get the Health ID at the nearest participating facility. Hence, this will make the process of ID generation much simpler and feasible for every individual.
The major facilities provided to the beneficiaries are as follows. They will be given access to their digital health records beginning from admission through treatment and till discharge at a click of the button. Secondly, they will be given access and link to their personal health records with their Health ID. This will create a longitudinal health history of the person and would be very easy to fetch all the details.
However, there is always one fear whether the data stores is safe or not? The NHA says that the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission would never store any personal health records of the beneficiary. The records are stored only with the healthcare information providers as per the policies and would be shared through the developed network through encrypted mechanisms which will ensure complete privacy.
