Abantika Ghosh Posted online: Sat Nov 26 2011, 02:32 hrs
New Delhi : In its ambitious plan to digitise health records, the Union Health Ministry may find itself weighing in favour of universalisation of unique identification (UID) despite the controversy associated with it.
The sub-committee on inter-operability of health data is all set to recommend UID number as the basis of the digitisation process. The committee feels that patients, doctors and all other handlers of a patient should be identified not by name but by the UID number to ensure accuracy and transferability of the data. In fact, say sources in the committee formed to look into various aspects of the plan to digitise health records, electronic health records (EHR) for the entire country may never be feasible without first universalising UID.
Dr S B Bhattacharyya, head of health informatics division of Tata Consultancy Services and a member of the committee, said: “The sub-committee has unanimously recommended that UID number should be the personal identification number for not just patients but for everybody else associated with the treatment process. The draft was submitted some time back, the responses from other committee members have come — none of whom had any objection to the UID plan — and we are now in the process of readying the final recommendations.”
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is working on a project to digitise medical data of all citizens right from birth to death. About a year back, a committee was constituted under additional secretary L C Goyal to look into various issues like standards for interoperability, disease codes, ethics and privacy and implementation of the plan. The sub-committee is a part of that group.
A few months back, FICCI was made the coordinator for the deliberations on the matter to ensure better participation of corporate hospitals.
“We are working on the plan to digitise health data. We have had a couple of meetings on it and a committee has been formed to look into the modalities. Once the blueprint is finalised. we intend to start it as a pilot in the central government hospitals and states can then adopt it,” said A K Panda, joint secretary in the ministry.
The idea, said a source, is to eventually make it a universal repository of health data of all citizens.
One of the issues the ministry is said to be grappling with is the tough task of getting private hospitals share their data.
“We are looking at all options to solve this problem, including the possibility of the rules that are being framed under the Clinical
Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act 2010 to have provisions that make it mandatory for hospitals to share health records,” he added.