Not just Doctors, Medical Students to also have MCI Unique ID

Written by Meghna A Singhania Published On 2017-10-16T15:24:37+05:30 | Updated On 16 Oct 2017 3:24 PM IST

Not just Doctors, Medical Students to also have MCI Unique ID

New Delhi: Moving towards complete digitisation of records of the medical personnel across the country, the health ministry has now proposed that each medical student will also have a unique ID given by the Medical Council of India.

Medical Dialogues team had earlier reported that the apex medical body 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. On similar lines, the health ministry has now come up with the proposal that the council should also generate and provide a unique ID to every medical student, upon their admission to MBBS courses across the country.

A recent meeting at the Health Ministry with MCI, CBSE, NBE as well as representatives of medical colleges, ended with the following advisory to the MCI

The chair advised MCI to generate unique ID online for every candidate when s,/he secures admission in a medical course so that the exact admission status is known for the entire country, particularly the number of unfilled seats by the last date of admission. This was also discussed during the presentation made by DMMp team of MCI in the Ministry.

The said unique ID, which can also be considered as a permanent roll number will be generated after registration with the Medical Council of India's (MCI) software, whose main role is to check malpractices in the admission process. The software has been developed under the initiative of Digital Mission Mode Project (DMMP) and will be functional from next year, a senior Health Ministry official informed Millenium Post.

The biggest advantage of the unique ID would be bringing transparency in the medical admission process and with the same, a student would not be allowed to back more than two seats. Further, the ID would remain permanent, even if the medical student moves from one medical college to another.

"The launch of software would help in checking frauds such as admitting a low-rank holder, admitting more students than the approved seats, filling the backlog seats, etc. The roll number generated after registering with MCI software would be linked to Aadhaar number, which would help in authenticating the identity of students," the official told Millenium Post.

Another benefit of the unique id would be real-time monitoring of medical admissions by the Council."Given that some medical colleges don't provide the correct admission figures to the MCI even after several reminders, the government and MCI would be able to monitor the whole admission process on a real-time basis. With the help of the software, MCI would able to know the exact time of admission and the number of vacant seats soon after the end of the last date of admission," a senior MCI official told the daily.

Meghna A Singhania

Meghna A Singhania is the founder and Editor-in-Chief at Medical Dialogues. An Economics graduate from Delhi University and a post graduate from London School of Economics and Political Science, her key research interest lies in health economics, and policy making in health and medical sector in the country. She is a member of the Association of Healthcare Journalists. She can be contacted at meghna@medicaldialogues.in. Contact no. 011-43720751