Thread by @spinesurgeon

National Digital Health Mission : Clarification

Long Thread. Please be patient even if you feel certain Points are repeated

Let us start with a letter. How do I send you a letter. I send to your home address or office Address. You have got the letter, read it and filed it

Now, if you want to read it for some clarification, you need to go to your home or office, retrieve the file and check it

This was how letters were being used.

Then in 1990s came the eMail. Here The Mail was served in a server and you can read it any time.

In the early days, the server was maintained by Educational institutions or Internet Service Providers. Though you were getting the letters, the downside was that you need to change your address once you left the educational institution or opted for another ISP

And It is at this time, Hotmail was introduced. They promised one permanent address. Later Operamail, usa.net, rediffmail, yahoomail started and from 2004, GMAIL is ruling this arena

Those who started their mail with GMail may not know the earlier problems

How
How are hospital Records maintained.
It is predominantly in paper (like good old postal letters)
Even those which are maintained in electrical forms, it is by the hospitals (like the institute provided mail boxes) which you cannot use in other hospitals

There are many companies which tried to address this problem
But
Most, if not all of them, opted for a wrong revenue model

Either they tried to sell patient data
or
Sell Drugs / Investigations to patients
or
Get money from doctors

Hence the trust to scale up was missing

In this scenario
It is clear that
Only a EHR (Electronic Health Record) or EMR (Electronic Medical Record) software which is available free of cost to both patient and doctors and give the ownership to the patient can solve the problem
nhp.gov.in

To build this and maintain this needs money
So
A Government Run System is needed

This is exactly what @PMOIndia Prime Minister @narendramodi ji has announced today as National Digital Health Mission

This is nothing but equivalent to your GMail Inbox

but maintained by Govt of India and accessible to both doctors and patients, in both private and public

The full details are not out. I am sure it will be done in phased manner

But once fully done, it would revolutionize the way health care is being delivered

This is long due reform and soon all countries would be doing it
nhp.gov.in/NHPfiles/Natio…