With a vision to make an impactful advancement in the provider ecosystem, ACCESS Health International has released an exhaustive report titled ‘Healthcare Industry – Provider Working Group Consultation & Recommendations’ to discuss and develop a majority agreement towards the exchange of health information in standardized formats towards fostering a digital healthcare ecosystem in India.The report was released last month and can be accessed here.
ACCESS Health Digital in India had formed three healthcare providers working groups towards the report. The objective of these working groups was to reach a majority-based agreement on sector-specific interoperability standards and present the results to the National Digital Health Mission [NDHM] for implementation and adoption of the National Digital Health Blueprint [NDHB] and thus creation of National Digital Health Ecosystem [NDHE]. After numerous, successful deliberations, ACCESS Health Digitalcompiled the final recommendations of these working groups, into the report.
The provider side working groups were convened by ACCESS Health Digital to achieve consensus on the foundational elements of such an eco-system and elicit what the industry players feel would contribute to a system that can meet the national policy goals in line with the universally accepted sustainable development goals framework.The three Healthcare Provider Working group formed were:
- Telemedicine Working Group
- Pharmacy Working Group
- Diagnostic Working Group (Laboratory and Radiology)
The report presents recommendations of the working groups on sector-specific interoperability standards.
The Telemedicine Working Group comprising of Healthcare Industry providers was convened to arrive at a common consensus on Telemedicine standards, semantic interoperability, and guidelines for India, which are uniform across the ecosystem and can be integrated at the national level using NDHB based building blocks – Minimum Viable Product [MVP].
The Pharmacy working groupcomprised of representations from pharmaceutical manufacturing companies, distributors, organized pharmacies, and industry groups. The working group aimed to serve as a communication platform between the pharmaceutical companies and government authorities and regulators.
The Diagnostics Working Group comprised of Industry professionals/experts from hospitals, laboratories, diagnostic organizations, and technology companies. Its purpose was to resolve the issue of interoperability by identifying the standards in clinical laboratory and radiology data exchange. Based on these inputs and interactions during the discussions, the working group constituted a focused Special Interest Group (SIG) that further deliberated about the final set of recommendations, to achieve a single set of standards and codes for easier and semantic interoperability of individual health records between various systems. The report has been made available in the public domain for the benefit of the larger digital health community.