Background
1.1.1. The National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 has the following goal:
“The attainment of the highest possible level of health and wellbeing for all at all ages, through a
preventive and promotive health care orientation in all developmental policies, and universal
access to good quality health care services without anyone having to face financial hardship as a
consequence.”
1.1.2. In a follow-up of the NHP’s specific goals for adopting digital technologies, the Ministry of Health
and Family Welfare constituted a committee headed by Shri J. Satyanarayana to develop an
implementation framework for the National Health Stack. This committee produced the National
Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB), laying out the building blocks and an action plan to
comprehensively and holistically implement digital health.
1.1.3. Taking forward the NDHB, this document describes the broad context, rationale, scope, and
implementation arrangements for a digital ecosystem for healthcare services across the country.
Since the implementation is envisioned to be in a mission mode, the initiative is referred to as the
National Digital Health Mission (NDHM).
1.2. Vision of National Digital Health Mission
1.2.1. To create a national digital health ecosystem that supports universal health coverage in an
efficient, accessible, inclusive, affordable, timely and safe manner, that provides a wide-range of
data, information and infrastructure services, duly leveraging open, interoperable, standardsbased digital systems, and ensures the security, confidentiality and privacy of health-related
personal information.
1.3. Objectives of National Digital Health Mission
1.3.1. To strengthen the accessibility and equity of health services, including continuum of care with
citizen as the owner of data, in a holistic healthcare programme approach leveraging IT &
associated technologies and support the existing health systems in a ‘citizen-centric’ approach, the
NDHM envisages the following specific objectives:
1. To establish state-of-the-art digital health systems, to manage the core digital health data, and
the infrastructure required for its seamless exchange;
2. To establish registries at appropriate level to create single source of truth in respect of clinical
establishments, healthcare professionals, health workers, drugs and pharmacies;
3. To enforce adoption of open standards by all national digital health stakeholders;
4. To create a system of personal health records, based on international standards, easily
accessible to individuals and healthcare professionals and services providers, based on
individual’s informed consent;
5. To promote development of enterprise-class health application systems with a special focus on
achieving the Sustainable Development Goals for health;
6. To adopt the best principles of cooperative federalism while working with the States and Union
Territories for the realization of the vision;
7. To ensure that the healthcare institutions and professionals in the private sector participate
actively with public health authorities in the building of the NDHM, through a combination of
prescription and promotion;
8. To ensure national portability in the provision of health services;
9. To promote the use of clinical decision support (CDS) systems by health professionals and
practitioners;
10. To promote a better management of the health sector leveraging health data analytics and
medical research;
11. To provide for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of governance at all levels;
12. To support effective steps being taken for ensuring quality of healthcare; and
13. To strengthen existing health information systems, by ensuring their conformity with the
defined standards and integration with the proposed NDHM.