Telangana government is planning to cover all districts of the State under the ‘Digital Health Profile Project’ in a phased manner.
According to KT Rama Rao, Minister for Municipal Administration, IT & Industries, Government of Telangana, the pilot project launched in Siricilla and Mulugu districts last year has almost been completed and elicited a good response.
“The idea is to collect the personal health profile of people in the State as a step towards personalised medical care in emergencies as well as in case of complicated treatments,” Rao said in an interaction.
Under the pilot project, basic data on individual health was collected from those aged above 18 years to build a digital health profile by further processing the data to be kept ready to be accessed at any time digitally.
“For instance, when someone goes to a hospital in an emergency, doctors would need his or her basic health data which helps in precision medicine and this is one of the objectives of the programme,” the Minister said.
Project methodology
The project will be based on a door-to-door collection of samples by the medical teams who are assisted by the ASHA workers.
The medical teams collect a range of details about individual health including blood pressure, sugar, height, weight, and blood samples. An exclusive identification process by using Aadhaar will be for each who gives the samples.
Issues such as data protection to ensure the privacy of individual health records is being worked out by the government as a prelude to rolling out the programme.
The efforts by the State government to improve the health system in the State have been reflected in the State’s year-on-year performance on the NITI Aayog Health Index.
In terms of overall performance, Telangana moved from 11th rank amongst the 19 larger States in 2015-16 to third rank in 2019-20. The index assessed the performance of the State along 24 indicators in the domains of health outcomes, governance and information, and key inputs and processes.
