The Centre is repurposing Aarogya Setu and CoWIN, the two digital health systems that were successfully used to monitor and manage the Covid-19 outbreak, under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission.
The National Health Authority’s chief executive, RS Sharma, announced on September 25 that Arogya Setu had been downloaded 240 million times. The application is being modified to address India’s digital health concerns now that coronavirus is “hopefully” no longer a threat, according to Sharma. People will no longer have to wait in line to
check in at a hospital; instead, they will simply scan and obtain the OPD card, according to Sharma.
In the last ten years or so, India has created a plethora of digital public platforms, each of which is unique in its own way. Aadhar, UPI electronic KYC, digital lockers, and other examples are available. Sharma claims that India is developing service-level registers for doctors, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, health records, and so on.
Aarogya Setu was created to handle COVID-19 in a more systematic manner. It has been updated to be a health and wellness app. CoWIN will be used for India’s universal immunisation programme after being extensively used to facilitate COVID-19 immunisation.
CoWIN repurposed
Furthermore, CoWIN is being repurposed so that people can use it to find and obtain the other 12 mandatory vaccines covered by the national immunisation programme, including the polio drop.
The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission was launched on September 27, 2021. Within a year of its launch, the digital mission had reached the milestone of 10 million digitally linked health records, with over 2.7 million records linked every day. According to Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, this marks a significant turning point in the country’s effort to digitise health records.
Furthermore, the Healthcare Professionals Registry now has approximately 80,000 registered healthcare professionals as well as at least 1,50,000 registered healthcare facilities. As of this writing, 7,11,571 people had downloaded the ABHA app.
Sharma claims that digital platforms are highly scalable. On Day 1, 200,000 doses of the Covid vaccine were recorded before increasing to a daily rate of 25 million doses.
