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India needs to revise its National Health Policy 2017 with digital age updates, said Dr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta, chairman, Health Parliament and the Academy of Digital Health Sciences and former advisor to Union health minister, JP Nadda.
The world has undergone a sea change with burden of diseases, technology adoption, and patient awareness regarding digital health. It is high time India sets up a committee to review all its policies devised in the pre-Covid era, he added.
To this end, the Health Parliament has done an in-depth analysis of the National Health Policy and the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) and submitted reports to the Union health minister. With ABDM completing three years, India can leverage the massive digital infrastructure built and reorient it in the next two years. In fact, digital health is transforming with the emergence of multimodal artificial intelligence (AI). Hence, there is a need to develop a comprehensive policy framework to ensure these innovations deliver equitable, safe, and efficient healthcare at a fraction of the cost, said Dr Gupta who had drafted the National Health Policy in June 2016, which was approved by the Government in 2017.
The new policy needs to move from primary care to digital primary care. It should shift from sub-centers to mobile services with AI. This will ensure that the basic pillar of primary care becomes AI-driven self-care, and the policy must acknowledge that the technology is mature enough to leverage the CMPs (Case Management Protocols) and STPs (Standard Treatment Protocols) to provide basic acute care services to the remotest areas.
All government medical staff must be compulsorily deployed to spend 10-15% of their time via the eSanjeevani platform to offer digital consultations and second opinions to anyone within the golden hour. The government must invest and promote digital therapeutics for chronic disease management, and institutions like AIIMS and IITs must collaborate to develop digital therapeutics.
The allopathic system of medicine must use a treatment plan based on the five body types as identified by Ayurveda, and this will lead to scientific personalized medicine. Digital Health tools can be used to make this a reality, Dr Gupta told Pharmabiz in an email.
Digital health raises significant concerns about data privacy and security. India needs stringent policies to protect patient information. The current Data Protection Bill should be expanded to include explicit regulations for health data to be stored securely, shared only with authorized entities, and used responsibly for research and innovation. Transparency is necessary on how data is used and penalties for breaches are crucial to building public trust in digital health platforms, he said.
Adoption of AI in healthcare is now a reality, and the government needs to swiftly lay down frameworks to ensure that innovation and efficacy do not compromise patient safety. No doubt, digital healthcare requires overhauling India’s medical education system with training of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers to use digital tools.
India's health policy should encourage public-private partnerships to foster innovation and drive digital revolution. It should also support local startups working on digital health technologies with infrastructure and funding needed to scale, said Dr Gupta.
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