Public digital infra can help ease healthcare delivery, says RS Sharma

India's public digital infrastructure can be leveraged to ease healthcare delivery, since it is interoperable, scalable, frugal, and open, said RS Sharma, CEO of the National Health Authority.

Earlier this week, the government launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), which will provide a unique digital health ID for every citizen.

The ID creates a health account to ensure that old medical records are not lost, as every record will be stored digitally. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the programme had the potential to bring “revolutionary change in India’s health facilities”.


“Essentially, the idea of the digital mission…is to leverage information and communication technology…. and data to essentially make the health services delivery,” Sharma said at the Global Fintech Fest on Wednesday.

He added that adopting digital in health services delivery will cut costs, make healthcare affordable, reduce frictions and travel hassles.

Sharma said India could also have health data aggregators.

The country already has Account Aggregators, which give users the power to share data easily between different financial service providers, by consolidating all the data in one place.

“What is going to happen is this whole platform, the whole network, is going to generate a huge amount of that data, will be an extremely valuable and a goldmine for various stakeholders like insurance companies,” Sharma said.