J P Nadda launches Unified Health Interface for seamless healthcare access

New Delhi: Union Health Minister J P Nadda on Monday launched the Unified Health Interface (UHI), an interoperable digital network under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), that will allow patients to discover, book and access verified healthcare services across multiple digital platforms without being tied to a single application.

Launched as the service layer of the ABDM, UHI seeks to address fragmentation in India's digital health ecosystem by enabling patients and healthcare providers to connect irrespective of the application they use.

At present, both users and providers must be on the same application to interact, limiting access and choice, the health ministry said.


According to the ministry, UHI operates through open protocols on the ABDM Gateway, developed and maintained by the National Health Authority (NHA).

When a citizen searches for a health service on a UHI-enabled application, the request is routed through the gateway to registered healthcare providers, enabling discovery, booking and service delivery through a common technical framework.

The network uses the Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) as the patient identifier, while the Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) and Health Facility Registry (HFR) are used to verify providers. Health records are shared only through consent-based mechanisms under the Health Information Exchange.

The ministry said UHI is built on four key principles -- interoperability, fair discoverability, verification and open protocols. It said every verified healthcare provider, irrespective of size, location or platform, will have an equal opportunity to be discovered by citizens using any UHI-compatible application.

Officials said the platform is expected to improve access to verified healthcare services, particularly in semi-urban and rural areas where patients often rely on informal channels to locate doctors and healthcare facilities.

For healthcare providers, including individual doctors, small clinics and diagnostic centres, UHI offers access to a wider network of patients without dependence on any single digital platform.

The open protocol architecture is also expected to encourage innovation by allowing developers to build health applications in multiple languages and across devices.

The ministry said four citizen services have been made operational on UHI-enabled applications in the first phase.

In the next phase, the network will be expanded to include the discovery and booking of laboratory diagnostic services, vaccination centres, licensed pharmacies and government-run pharmacy outlets.

It will also enable citizens to discover and access services offered under various government health programmes through the same digital network.

The ministry said the long-term vision is to develop UHI into a nationwide open digital health infrastructure where any citizen, on any compatible application, can access verified health services and any provider, regardless of size or geography, can participate in the network.