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12th October 2007
Dear Mr.
Prime Minister,
The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) is convinced that extensive use of IT in
health care will promote the delivery of efficient health care in the country. However as
the use of IT in the management of healthcare and medical knowledge will increase, the
health care establishments will develop and use their own health IT systems. It has been
the experience of western countries that these individually developed systems are often
not interoperable with other establishments, which makes the health care system
inefficient and expensive. We believe that India has a unique opportunity to learn from
the world experience and adopt only the proven best practices in the field.
In this context NKC constituted a working group, under the chairmanship of Dr N K
Ganguly, Chairman Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) to study the use of IT
in future health care1. The working group studied the future need, conducted several
meetings and deliberations, and held consultations with various national and international
experts. We believe that the use of IT in health care needs a national direction for its
proper implementation and make the following recommendations for developing a Health
Information Network:
1. Initiate development of Indian Health Information Network
India needs to develop a web-based network, connecting all health care
establishments, in both private and public sector. When fully functional, all health
care transactions will be recorded electronically and this data will be available in the
health data vault to authorized users when they need it and where they need it.
The proposed Knowledge Network with gigabit capabilities may provide the
backbone and network infrastructure on which the Health Information Network may
ride. The network will be a 'hub and spoke model.' All health care establishments in
a district will connect to a central data repository at the district level. All the district
nodal data repositories will connect with a state level data bank, which in turn will
connect with a central data bank.
There should be active involvement of private and public health entities to effectively
address the creation of this network, portals, electronic health records, health data
vault, security, privacy and other related issues in future, which will encourage the
participation of the following:
- Citizens
- Health care providers and payers
- Education, research institutions and investigators
- Government departments and institutions
- Public health agencies and NGOs
- Pharmaceutical industry and medical device makers
- Telemedicine institutions
- Software and hardware developers
The ready availability of information will accrue enormous benefits to public health
planning, medical education, cost control, medical research, drug development,
prevention of fraud, disaster management and improved patient care.
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