NHA invites suggestion from stakeholders' on plans for NDHM development

New Delhi: In an effort to enhance the engagement with stakeholders, the National Health Authority (NHA) on Monday released consultation papers for comments and suggestions on two building blocks of the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) - the Health Facility Registry (HFR) and the Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR).

"In light of the upcoming national rollout of the NDHM and the expanded scope of these registries, NDHM seeks inputs from all stakeholders on the consultation papers by 13th July 2021," said the release.

According to the government, since the launch of the pilot project of NDHM in August 2020 in six union territories, multiple rounds of consultations with different groups of stakeholders have been held for both building blocks to surface concerns and challenges in adoption of the registries.

The Health Facility Registry (HFR) is proposed to be developed as the single complete, up-to-date repository of health facilities in the country and primary source of information for all other databases and lists. HFR is anticipated to facilitate the exchange of standardized data of public and private health facilities across all systems of medicine.

While the Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) is proposed to be developed as the hub of all healthcare professionals involving doctors, para-medics, nurses, midwives and community health workers (e.g. ASHAs, ANMs). For this, the current existing Doctors Registry, DigiDoctor for comprehensive repository of information on doctors practicing or teaching across systems of medicine will be expanded to include various other categories of healthcare professionals.

Giving his views on the consultation papers, R S Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority (NHA) said, “We are developing the National Digital Health Ecosystem in a consultative manner. Therefore, I urge all stakeholders to go through these papers and provide us with their valuable feedback.”

NHA is also planning to organize two public webinars shortly to provide an overview of each of the above consultation papers in the next five-seven days. The link will be shared on NDHM’s website www.ndhm.gov.in. Further set of consultation papers on related issues shall be released by the NHA soon, informed the release