MCI Digitisation of Doctor Records: Karnataka Medical Council locks horns with apex medical regulator

Bengaluru: Hitting a dead-end in the state, the Medical Council of India’s  (MCI) ambitious plan to provide Aadhaar-linked unique digital identity cards to the doctors all across the country has drawn immense condemnation from Karnataka Medical Council (KMC).

In a recent reply to the apex medical regulator, the KMC has claimed that there’s a scam brewing in Digital Mission Mode Project (DMMP).

The Medical Council of India (MCI) had announced its move to have a new Indian Medical Register, whereby each medical practitioner in the country will have a unique permanent registration number. The UPRN number was put forward as a solution to a number of issues that are plaguing the medical practitioners across the country, including duplicate registrations across various states, renewal of registrations, as well as that the growing menace fake medical practitioners

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This massive Rs 80 crore project of digitalization of doctors’ data was awarded to Bodhtree Consulting.

DMMP was formed to provide authentic data about medical professionals to ensure better policy-making towards building a strong public healthcare system in the country. This project requires up-to-date registration of doctors through state-run medical councils in order to be linked with Aadhaar.

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After its proposal, the plan was communicated to various states for its execution.

However, the KMC started renewing doctors’ registration in 2016 and wanted the data generated by the same to be incorporated in the MCI database, rather than the fresh exercise.

 “We had even told MCI that the KMC had already started the renewal process based on Aadhaar numbers and the same could be used as DMMP. But the MCI insisted that the project has to be done in every state,” KMC authorities told TOI.

With recent media revelations, the project seems to have hit a scandal of sorts in the state. According to TOI, earlier this year, a person claiming to be an MCI representative visited KMC for a day for the digital work, but did nothing and left the same day. However, a month later in April, the medical council received an email from the MCI in which it thanked state medical council for extending support over the last eight months in digitalizing Karnataka doctors’ data by working closely with the said representative from a private company.

A shocked Karnataka Medical Council immediately wrote back to MCI, stating it’s nothing but false information as no work had been done yet. “There’s a scam brewing in DMMP,” claimed the state medical authorities, quotes TOI.

“No resource person has visited our council in the past eight months, except for one day during the initial period. Your resource person was not knowledgeable and said he’d replace himself with some other person who knows the project well for hand-holding the council for data to be included in the Indian Medical Registry. It is really disheartening to note about your communication regarding the completion of the project ... It is a false claim, without actually attending to the job assigned by the Medical Council of India,” read the mail from KMC to MCI, a copy of which is with TOI. The MCI is yet to reply on this.

However, on August 17, the MCI had called for a meeting with the state council to discuss DMMP project, but it was canceled at the last minute due to the demise of Former Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee adds the daily.