HIMSS Asia Pacific India Chapter organized a roundtable discussion on the National Health Portal project of the Ministry of health & family welfare at JLN Auditorium, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi on 8thJune. The idea behind the roundtable was to discuss, share the vision behind the project and discuss ideas that could make the national health portal successful. The participants included senior officials of the Ministry of Health & Family welfare and senior healthcare leaders from the healthcare sector. This was the first roundtable of its kind on this very important project.
During the Roundtable Discussion organized by HIMSS India at AIIMS, Dr. Suptendra Nath Sarbadhikari, Project Director, Centre for Health Informatics of the National Health Portal, and Member-Secretary, Steering Committee for the National Health Portal announced the launch date of National Health Portal (NHP) as October 1, 2013. Dr. Sarbadhikari, presented the Road map of the national health Portal and enlightened the participants in his very informative presentation.
He highlighted the objectives of National Health Portal; improve the health literacy of the masses in India, improve access to health services across the nation, decrease the burden of disease by educating the people on the preventive aspects of disease.
At the end of the roundtable, an innovative implementation of digitization at AIIMS trauma centre was showcased by a presentation from Dr. S K Bhoi. Also, during this roundtable, the Report on medical devices and interoperability was released.
In the opening remarks of interactive session, Prof. IB mentioned on the three e-Health trends forecasted by UN on MobileHealth, Social Media in Medicine and Personalized medicine.
Main themes emerging from the roundtable discussion included;
• With ever increase in tele–density, it was suggested that the portal needs to be integrated with Mobile and apps developed.
• Health Information is crucial in making informed decision, the importance of Data Validation and authenticity of the Information posted by Contributors was stressed.
• Ever changing and day to day advancement in healthcare landscape demands a nearly real time update of the portal.
• With the current status in Healthcare Information Technology there is an urgent Need of e- Health Policy
• One of the participant suggested the health information should be integrated with Aadhar.
• Role of Social Media to increase the visibility was suggested. At present there are 22 official languages of India ,Use of vernacular language / Translation to increase usability was advised. Taking a cue from CDC, Atlanta ,Health Advisory services related to Travel should be included in the portal. Need of Directory services of Clinicians, Pharmacist, Nurses and Para Medical staff was discussed. Adverse reporting, Pharmacovigilance was also suggested to be included in the portal.
• To increase the user friendliness, tutorial Video on navigation of website should be a part of the portal.
• Participants suggested developing the portal adopting the Iterative model.
Representation from Doctors of Public and Private Hospitals, Senior Government Officials, Healthcare IT professional, Social Services Organizations, Students and academician brought out diverse thoughts and winning strategies for the development of the NHP.
Mr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta thanked the organizers Ms. MadhubalaRadha Krishnan and Amit Mishra and the supporting organizations Continua Health Alliance, Government Industry Dialogue, Disease Management Association of India and Mcura.
