Modi Govt Proposes Creation of National Health Stack, invites comments

The National Health Stack (NHS) envisages a centralized health record for all citizens of the country in order to streamline the health information and facilitate effective management of the same. The proposed NHS is an approach to address the challenge and seeks to employ latest technology including Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence, a state of the art Policy Markup Language and create a unified health identity of citizens - as they navigate across services across levels of care, i.e. Primary, Secondary and Tertiary and also across Public and Private.

Once implemented, the National Health Stack will aim to significantly bring down the costs of health protection, converge disparate systems to ensure a cashless and seamlessly integrated experience for the poorest beneficiaries, and promote wellness across the population.

It will also provide a mechanism through which every user participating in the system can be uniquely identified.

"The registrant may create a virtual health ID to preserve their privacy when interacting with other users or stakeholders in the system," the paper said.

The National Health Policy 2017 had also envisaged creation of a digital health technology ecosystem aimed at developing an integrated health information system that serves the needs of all stakeholders.

As per the proposals, various layers of the NHS will be seamlessly linked to support national health electronic registries, a coverage and claims platform, a federated personal health records framework, a national health analytics platform as well as other horizontal components.

"The stack will embrace health management systems of public health programs and socio-demographic data systems," the paper said.

The key components of the NHS includes electronic health registries, coverage and claims platform, digital health ID cards, federated personal health records (PHR) framework and the National Health Analytics Framework.

The Aayog further said that in order to arrive at a well informed conclusion, it has invited comments from all stakeholders on the consultation paper.

The stakeholders can send their comments by August 1, 2018.

For more details check out the document below

http://www.niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/document_publication/NHS-Strategy-and-Approach-Document-for-consultation.pdf