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

The Public and Private Health System in India is struggling with multiplicity of information systems being used at central as well as at state level. Each of these systems is unable to exchange data and information with each other. To overcome similar challenges across ministries, the Ministry of Communication and Technologies initiated semantic standardization across various domains under Metadata and Data Standards (MDDS) project. The intent was to promote the growth of e-Governance within the country by establishing interoperability across e-Governance applications for seamless sharing of data and services. MDDS for health domain was created by adopting global standards in such a way that existing applications could be easily upgraded to the MDDS standards.  The exercise yielded approximately 1000 data elements. These data elements were expected to serve as the common minimum data elements for development of IT applications for various sub domains of health care. The need for th...

What is a Registry? A registry is an organized system or database that collects, stores uniformed data or information about an entity like patient, person , or facility etc and is kept updated at all times to act as “Single Source of Truth” for the entity in question. The data facilitated by the registry can be accessed as service by information technology applications or by the government for planning initiatives and governance. How a Registry is different from a Directory? A registry is an official record keeping database which not only identifies an entity uniquely but also proves its existence in the ecosystem in question. E.g.: ADHAAR- A person must be listed in AADHAAR registry to be able to verify his/her identification as an Indian Citizen with authentic demographic details. Directory on the other hand does not required to be an official or comprehensive, but mere a collection of data without uniquely identifying entities listed in it and do not serve as “single ...

Overview  With a proactive concern for patient safety and quality of care, The Indian Medical Council Act 1956 prohibits a person other than a medical practitioner enrolled on a State Medical Register or the Indian Medical Register (IMR) to practice in India. Every New Medical Graduate must Register with the respective State Medical Council Register and is then allocated a registration number. With that Registration Number, the Doctor can Practice anywhere in India.  As it works Currently, apart from MCI’s National level Indian Medical Register (IMR), different state councils have their own medical Registers. The MCI then compiles data received from state medical councils. Problem Statement  Healthcare being a State Subject, a degree of latency creeps into the system. However, when a Doctor migrates to any other part of India, he/she often overlook to update the State Register and also similarly about recent Qualifications, Degrees, Certifications, etc. This...

Epidemiology Surveillance is a Lever of Change - for implementation of National Digital Health Blueprint and adoption of National Digital Health Ecosystem. Given the vast and variable nature and quality of legacy and operational data being generated in  real time which requires to be captured, any solution adopted requires to essentially ingest these  disparate forms, allowing meaningful options in its use. This becomes a tall order for traditional  architectures like Data Warehouses, that constrain the types of data that can be stored in them,  both in terms of type and quality. Data lakes are the leading edge and evolving architecture that can help store, share and use  electronic health records and other patient data in its ever-expanding variety. Data Lakes open the  possibility of taking Healthcare Analytics to its Next Level by keeping pace with the rapid growth in  types and magnitude of data that needs to be harnessed and made use of. It is imp...

  Minimum viable product (MVP) is a strategy that has gained rapid and widespread acceptance among the startup community. Used effectively, it can be a compelling strategy to evaluate product-market fit, which often is the largest risk facing a new medical software company. The idea of MVP is to focus a product or service on the key value that it provides to a customer.  MVP is about the minimal functionality that will do the job. The MVP will fail if you go any lower or remove any functionality from the MVP. So the trick is that if the product can work without any Functionality - please remove it from the MVP. Figuring out whether organizations or individuals will adopt the product often is the largest challenge facing new companies. The goal of MVP is to test the adoption and payment assumptions as early as possible. MVP is that product which has just those basic functionality that allows you to ship the product out.   A Healthcare delivery organization typically o...

The need of a national level drug database has been recognized as a priority by the government in recent times. Even though it has gained government's attention it will take some time for a national level Drug Index to be available. Hence, we recommend the use of National Formulary of India (NFI) as a standard drug database. NFI has been adopted from World Health Organization (WHO) Model Formulary. For the promotion of rational use of drugs, the Indian Pharmacopiea Commision publishes National Formulary of India (NFI) at regular time intervals. The Formulary enlists the generic drugs, their classification, dosage, availability, indications, contradictions,precautions. To facilitate the use of NFI, the branded drugs can be mapped against the specific generic drugs or generic drug combinations and use relevant MDDS data elements and Code directories to prescribe their usage in a standardized format.  CSV Format NFI:   https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vJUIWg971MIVr...

  Download the Full Report Here. A federated health worker registry is proposed that will be maintained by the Central  Government and will store “identified minimum required informative fields” and will assign  a “unique identification number” for every ASHA worker. The ASHA registry will have  pointers to the state ASHA enrollment repositories or databases (DBT, HR etc) that will  push relevant data to the central registry for every new ASHA enrollment, any information  updation or change in employment status or location. Whenever a new ASHA health worker gets selected for final recruitment, gets enrolled  through an online common cloud-based portal or application by a trained staff appointed  by the district health dept or a private enrollment agency at the PHC or assigned anganwadi  center maintained at village or district level.  The enrollment process mandates ADHAAR card number authentication with the UIDAI  and assigns a uni...