Centre is working on a portal for doctors to access health information

Soon, a patient can walk into a hospital without carrying files containing previous scans and other health records. All they will need to do is quote their Aadhaar number.

With an intent to let patients records flow seamlessly among health care providers, the Union health ministry has invited bids from system integrators to develop a software and establish a platform where doctors and patients access their medical record through a portal and ensure that electronic medical record can be shared across various facilities.

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, which the health ministry plans to introduce, will link the hospitals with one another so that people do not have to carry their medical reports.

“We have invited bids from system integrators to develop a software and establish a platform for us and run it for five years. The bids will be open soon,” said Sunil Sharma, joint secretary in the health ministry.

To facilitate the system, a National e-Health Authority will be set up that would use Aadhaar-based biometric information to store health records including the medical history, procedures undergone, diagnosis, name of hospital, drug prescribed etc of the patients.

All this information will be accessible on a cloud-based e-application to the doctors across departments and among hospitals, ensuring quick transfer of information.

“The Aadhaar number will be used as the unique health identifier. This is specially relevant in cases of people sharing same names, surnames or even the same date of birth,” said another official.

However, in case of unavailability of Aadhaar, patients can be registered with government assigned identification cards. The shift from paper mode to digital mode will happen in a phased manner in hospitals across the country.

According to the joint secretary in the health ministry the plan is to link the central government hospitals and state government hospitals in the first phase and then rope in the private hospitals.

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