NITI Aayog on Friday inaugurated a National Conference on “Universal Access to Healthcare: Digital Solutions” to explore the way forward for universal access to affordable and quality healthcare services especially for people living in rural, remote and hilly areas.

Dr V K Paul, Member (Health) of NITI Aayog inaugurated the conference in presence of Union Health Secretary Apurva Chandra and National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Secretary General Bharat Lal.

Dr Paul highlighted that transformative changes were taking place across the health sector in India.

Noting that “a strong primary healthcare system is a high priority for reducing the healthcare burden in later ages”, he emphasised the steps being taken to particularly strengthen this network.

The NITI Aayog member also underlined five key principles for digital health solutions to embrace.

The principles are: Use of digital technologies and scaling them for saturation; Creating new technologies like robotics, AI etc., but in a way that it does not increase the digital divide, and can be easily used by those who are not digitally literate; Ensure solutions are within the ambit of rights and promote inclusivity, protection of human rights and further democratisation, with attention to protect the beneficiaries from cyber fraud.

”Digital solutions should promote or create an ecosystem of ease of living and not make it more complex for people; and Digital solutions must enhance quality of life, embrace wellbeing, include traditional knowledge, and accelerate our healthcare actions,” he said.

Health Secretary Chandra stated that one of the goals of the national digital mission is to increase the reach of healthcare services and reduce the disparity between rural and urban areas.

He highlighted the success of CoWIN and Aarogya Setu app which helped in delivering more than 220 crore vaccinations across the country.

He stated that the Union Government wants to replicate the same model through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, a flagship scheme of the government.

Apurva Chandra also informed about the upcoming launch of U-Win portal later this month which will keep a permanent digital record of vaccination and medicines of more than 3 cr pregnant women and mothers and almost 2.7 cr children born annually.

NHRC Secretary General Bharat Lal on the occasion said “Healthcare is a basic human right and without good health, the full potential of a human being cannot be realised.”

He highlighted that the scope of NHRC has increased from economic to the domain of socio-cultural sectors and stressed that since the health sector impacts everyone, it is currently engaged in this sector as well.

Madhukar Kumar Bhagat, Joint Secretary (E-Health); Dr Basant Garg, Addl. CEO, National Health Authority; Girish Krishnamurthy, CEO and Managing Director, Tata MD, innovators from civil society and start-ups, domain experts from WHO, UNDP and senior officials from the Union Government and states were present at the event.