Prime Minister Narendra Modi will announce the nationwide rollout of the Pradhan Mantri Digital Health Mission (PM-DHM) on September 27, 2021.

PM-DHM aims to harness technology to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of healthcare delivery in India, through better access to healthcare data.

It seeks to create a national digital health infrastructure starting with the building of Health IDs, Unique Identifiers for doctors and health facilities, Personal Health Records, and telemedicine and e-pharmacy, among other components.

The PM-DHM supports Universal Health Coverage in an efficient, accessible, inclusive, affordable, and safe manner through the provision of a wide range of data, information, and infrastructure services, officials said Wednesday.

The digital health ID provided to people under the PM-DHM will contain the health record of the citizen.

The health ID card is created with details like Aadhar and mobile number for generating a unique ID for each individual.

The PM-DHM or Pradhan Mantri Digital Health Mission is currently in its pilot phase across the union territories of Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Dadra, and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, and Puducherry.

Under the PM-DHM scheme, to be launched on Monday, a digital health ID will be provided to the people, which will contain all the health records of the person. This health ID will be made unique for each person and will be created with details like Aadhaar and mobile number.

The mission is on track and the three basic platforms — health ID, doctor’s registry, and the health facility registry — have been made operational, the officials said.

“The primary aim of this mission is to enhance the efficiency of the healthcare system in India. The National Digital Health ecosystem will be a one-stop solution for the healthcare needs of the common man.

The difficulty of maintaining long trails of paper-based health records, or standing in long queues at health facilities, etc. will no longer be a burden in this digitally-driven ecosystem.

From both the citizen and medical practitioner point of view, the mission is privacy and security-led and will enable consent-based sharing of health information in the form of test reports, scans, prescriptions, and diagnosis reports between patients and treating medicos thereby making follow-up care seamless, secure and timely, said the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare in a statement earlier.