We May Soon Have Health Data Aggregators, Says RS Sharma

Lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious Ayushman Bharat – Digital Mission, RS Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority while speaking at an industry forum on Wednesday said that by adopting the digital in health services, we may soon have health data aggregators as data from this new platform will be extremely valuable for a lot of stakeholders.

“This whole platform and network will generate a lot of data and that data will be extremely valuable and like a gold mine for a lot of stakeholders like the insurance companies. They will get the ability to fine tune the insurance premia based on this data and patterns,” he said.

Sharma said that the mission will leverage the information and communication technology and all the things around it like artificial intelligence and machine learning to make the delivery of health services more efficient.

Sharma also talked on the recently launched account aggregator framework and described it as a “powerful construct.” He said that the account aggregator framework reduces the cost of transaction to virtually zero which will enable algorithmic credit and very short-term credits to self-employed people. 

“I think it (Account Aggregator Model) will be a tremendous revolution in credit availability and credit delivery system and it will benefit not only the poor people but financial institutions as well,” he added.

Acknowledging the concerns around privacy, Sharma said that the whole architecture is privacy preserving and it empowers people where the authorities get the proof of consent from the individual to use his/her data.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday had launched the digital Ayushman Bharat Mission under which every citizen can get a health ID and digitise their health records. At present, the use of digital health ID in hospitals is currently limited to only one hospital or to a single group, and mostly concentrated in large private chains. The new initiative will bring the entire ecosystem on a single platform.