India Is Getting Ready for Nationwide Healthcare Program

Indian Health Ministry partners with Dell and Tata Trusts to provide the technology solution for a nationwide healthcare program

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, here today exchanged the MoUs with the Tata Trusts and Dell to provide a technological platform for nationwide prevention, control, screening, and management program of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs).

Smt Anupriya Patel, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare presided over the ceremony and also released the user manual for NCD application under Comprehensive Primary Health Care (CPHC) IT Solutions. SmtPreeti Sudan, Secretary (Health), Shri Burzis Taraporewala, Senior Adviser, Tata Trusts and Shri Sarv Saravanan, Senior Vice President, Dell EMC COE and Mr. Jeremy Ford, Director, Dell Giving were also present at the MoU exchange ceremony.

Speaking at the occasion, SmtAnupriya Patel stated that the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS) stresses on the preventive and promotive aspects of healthcare, which is also impressed upon in the National Health Policy 2017.

She further stated that the government has now decided to go ahead with the population-based screening under NHM for diabetes, Hypertension and three types of common cancers. “Under Ayushman Bharat we have decided to transform 1.5 Lakh Sub Centre and Public Health Centres into Health and Wellness Centres to provide a bouquet of 12 different kinds of services of which Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) form an important part,” she added.

Smt. Anupriya Patel further said that this ambitious program of reaching out to such a large target group cannot be successfully implemented without a strong IT backbone. She lauded Dell for the development of the technology platform and Tata Trusts for the implementation support of the NCD programme and added that this software application will help in plugging gaps at the field level.

Non-Communicable Disease (NCD screening program addresses Hypertension, Diabetes, Oral, Breast and Cervical cancers and covers all men and women over the age of 30 years. The programme, which is one of the modules in Ayushman Bharat’s Comprehensive Primary Healthcare (CPHC) Initiative, is currently being deployed in about 200 districts across the country. Through the implementation of the software, it will also be possible to track health trends across the country.

Aimed at bringing healthcare technology transformation in Comprehensive Primary Health Care NCD program under Ayushman Bharat, the Health Ministry is working with Dell as a technology partner and the Tata Trusts as deployment partner.

A cloud-based mobile, web and analytics solution has been developed to digitize health records to aid the population-based screening program, to bring quality health services at the doorstep, to enable increased productivity for health workers and doctors, and to facilitate monitoring of the delivery of services by state and district administrators.

This technology solution has been developed by Dell, through Dell Giving, Dell’s CSR program, and in collaboration with reputed institutions and experts from AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences),  DGHS (Directorate General of Health Services), WHO (World Health Organization) India, ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research), NHSRC (National Health Systems Resource Center), NICPR (National Institute of Cancer Prevention Research), Tata Trusts, NIC (National Informatics Center), (CHI) Center for Health Informatics, and IndiaStack team at iSPIRT and State Health Departments. The technology solution is hosted on a Government Data Center and managed by the Centre for Health Informatics, MoHFW.

The Tata Trusts are supporting the quality implementation of the programme in States through training, and programme management activities to ensure technology adoption amongst health staff and steady progress through continuous monitoring. Through the Trusts’ trained and skilled personnel on the field, health workers, doctors, and local administrators have ready access to support and guidance on challenges they may face adopting the IT solution.

The NCD IT solution covers program-level data for screening, referral, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up activities of non-communicable diseases with an aim to connect health workers, doctors, and decision-makers in a single, integrated platform. It will provide health records for citizens, mobile applications for health workers, a web portal for the medical officers and dashboards for health officials. [Ministry of Health and Family Welfare]

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