#Opensource Healthcare Community for #DigitalHealth #Ecosystem [OpenHealthCODE]

eObjects were first written by Prof Dennis Streveler and Dr Pankaj Gupta in a white paper in Nov 2018 that was published by Niti Aayog in the book Health Systems for New India, Chapter 5 - Reimagining India's Digital Health Landscape Wiring the Indian Health Sector in Nov 2019. OpenHealthCODE Strategy Council defined the details of the National Digital Health Blueprint building blocks - Minimum viable products including the eObjects and microservices architecture to comply with the NDHB Standards.  OpenHealthCODE  runs a Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator to accelerate the implementation of the NDHB Standards through these building blocks.  The eObjects have now been adopted by Joint working Group of National Health Authority NHA and Insurance Regulatory Development Authority IRDAI Sub group on common IT infrastructure, in its report published on 11 Sep 2019 and will be built into the India’s national Health Claims platform. [ NHA IRDA Press Release ] The eObjects were...

Immediate usecases:  ePrescription and eEncounter FHIR based Objects for Telemedicine interoperability.  The same eObjects can also be used for Referral across Primary, Secondary and Tertiary care. Epidemiological Surveillance is the next big thing. We will need eEncounter, ePrescription and eDischarge Objects to fetch the data from disparate OPD/IPD HIS/EMR systems. eObjects act as a Standard Output Format in these use cases. The need for the eObjects arose because most of the Healthcare-IT applications are being developed without any standards by different agencies and vendors in the public and private sector in India. Each application is developed for standalone use without much attention to semantic interoperability. Later when the thought of interoperability emerges – it becomes difficult to connect the systems and make them talk to each other because they were never designed for that purpose.   Even if technical and organizational interoperability is done the semant...

India’s Healthcare system is fragmented, the country is too diverse and large for a single unified system. Each state has its own healthcare programs. The central government provides the majority of the funds but the implementation largely rests with the states. States that are better off are independent in their decision making and show better outcomes. However, India can still aim for standardized protocols and interoperability across states. Interestingly, digital technology is proving to be a binding force between the three important stakeholders of healthcare namely, payer, provider and people. The new Ayushman Bharat national health insurance program is becoming the melting pot for public and private healthcare and emerging as the biggest driver for digital health. Healthcare in India has lagged in adoption of technologies, but digital technologies are now pushing the country in the right direction. Technology driven transformation has happened in many sectors like Mobile and Tel...

India is in the midst of what some have dubbed the “world’s biggest healthcare overhaul.” In addition to recently launching one of the world’s largest publicly funded health insurance programs, set to cover some 500 million people living in poverty, the government has also been working diligently to develop a new digital health strategy for the nation. The work on the strategy began more than five years ago, when the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Communication and Technologies developed a new set a metadata and data standards for health – essentially a common set of standards for the collection, creation, and coding of all health data that can be easily transferred across computers and information systems anywhere in the country. The standards were based on global best practices but adapted to better serve the local context. Previous to its work on data standards, the government also developed a system to allow it to issue a National Identification Number to...

Digital Health Strategy Council was commissioned by the OpenHealthCODE. The Theme was Digital for Universal Health Coverage for India. It brought together an Eclectic group of Healthcare and Digital Health Experts to come up with far reaching and game changing recommendations to achieve the objective over 1000 days.  Recommendations were prepared by Digital Health Strategy Council during April 2019 to June 2019. The recommendations were released on 27th June 2019. Healthcare in Concurrent list. GST Council model - Healthcare Council. Declare Healthcare as Fundamental Right. Roadmap 60%, 80% and then 100% UHC. Portability of Healthcare like telecom.  Declare Hospital as Infrastructure Sector. AI based Health Delivery information Systems (HDIS) for Medical Colleges. Catch them young. Publish Standards based HDIS (like Android model). Let the vendors put their own skin on top. Social Media type Knowledge Management (KM) built on National Knowledge  Network  (NKN) a...