New Delhi: The National Health Authority (NHA) issued hardware guidelines across states and union territories for healthcare institutions like hospitals, clinics, and health and wellness centres to promote digitisation in hospitals.
An official spokesman in a statement issued by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) said that the guidelines provide a basic framework to states and union territories for planning, assessment, and procurement of the IT hardware (including IT specifications of various hardware equipment) to operate applications compliant with Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM).
Talking about the guidelines, CEO NHA R S Sharma said, “The first step towards ABDM implementation is digitisation of hospitals. Several states and union territories expressed the need for some guidelines that give them an overview of the IT infrastructure requirements based on the health facility size.
The hardware guidelines issued by NHA will help the states and the union territories in assessing the requirement and facilitate the adoption of ABDM in their healthcare institutions.”
ABDM would simplify the processes and increase ease of living by connecting the digital health solutions of hospitals and other health facilities across the country with each other.
The digital ecosystem would also enable a host of other facilities like teleconsultation, paper-less health records, and QR code-based OPD registrations.
The digitisation of health records will ensure that old medical records of patients cannot get lost and are accessible to them anytime anywhere.
Ensuring necessary IT infrastructure and implementation of Hospital Information Management Systems across health facilities at the state and union territory level would play a pivotal role in the creation and exchange of digital health records across the ecosystem.
The guidelines on the IT hardware specifications to support this ecosystem is available at https://abdm.gov.in:8081/uploads/Hardware_Guidelines_ABDM_e162cf7a7b.pdf.
The document would help the states and union territories in assessing the hardware requirements while planning and procurement of IT assets for healthcare institutions of all scales.
The guidelines published by NHA are suggestive and recommendatory.
The states and union territories and the health facilities have the flexibility to modify these guidelines based on local requirements and circumstances.