Consultation papers released on Health Facility Registry and Healthcare Professionals Registry building blocks
The National Health Authority (NHA) recently released consultation papers on two building blocks of the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) – the Health Facility Registry (HFR) and the Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) for all stakeholders to give their comments and suggestions, a statement notified.
Both HFR and HPR are core building blocks of NDHM which are owned, developed and maintained by the Centre. In light of the upcoming national roll out of the NDHM and the expanded scope of these registries, NDHM seeks inputs from all stakeholders on the consultation papers by 13th July, 2021, it said.
It also said that the HFR is proposed to be the single complete, up-to-date repository of health facilities in the country and is envisioned as the primary source of information for all other databases and lists. HFR aims to facilitate the exchange of standardised data of public and private health facilities across all systems of medicine. Similarly, HPR will be the hub of all healthcare professionals involving doctors, para-medics, nurses, midwives and community health workers (e.g. ASHAs and ANMs). Currently, the Doctors Registry exists as DigiDoctor, which is a comprehensive repository of information on doctors practising or teaching across systems of medicine. Doctors Registry will be expanded to include various other categories of healthcare professionals. This new iteration will be referred to as HPR.
Since the launch of the pilot project of NDHM in August 2020 in six Union Territories (UTs), multiple rounds of consultations with different groups of stakeholders have been held for both building blocks to surface concerns and challenges in adoption of the registries. Consultation papers are aimed at further engagement with stakeholders. To ensure that the policy and development are participatory and inclusive, comments and diverse viewpoints are invited from concerned stakeholders, said the statement.
Giving his views on the consultation papers, R S Sharma, CEO, NHA, said, “We are developing the National Digital Health Ecosystem in a consultative manner. Therefore, I urge all stakeholders to go through these papers and provide us with their valuable feedback.”
The statement added that NHA is also planning to organise two public webinars shortly to provide an overview of each of the above consultation papers in the next five-seven days. The link will be shared on NDHM’s website www.ndhm.gov.in.
It also said that the full text of the consultation papers is available for download on NDHM’s website at https://ndhm.gov.in/publication/consultationpapers.
Comments and feedback can be uploaded on the same link or can be emailed to ndhm@nha.gov.in, it said.
Further set of consultation papers on related issues shall be released by the NHA soon, it mentioned.