The acceptance of digital healthcare is fast catching up as seen in the rapid surge in registrations to the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), the flagship healthcare initiative of the Centre.

In the last three months, 8.55 crore new registrations have been done for Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) per day, which is a ‘record’ surge in a single quarter after the launch of the scheme, a senior official of National Health Authority (NHA), told businessline. 

As on date, the total number of ABHA accounts reached 58.61 crore and the new registrations per day are in the range of 1.5-2 lakh, per NHA data.

ABDM is a digital initiative in the context of the Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY which is the largest health assurance scheme in the world which aims at providing a health cover of ₹5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation to over 12 crore poor and vulnerable families, approximately 55 crore beneficiaries, as per the information in PMJAY portal. There are 2.4 lakh verified health facilities and over 3 lakh verified healthcare professions, per the latest data.

Digitised records

“More significantly, there has been remarkable enthusiasm among the general public to avail the digitisation of health records, as about 36 crore ABHA accounts have already been linked with health records,” the official said.  

The patients can access these records on their mobiles using any ABDM’s reference Personal Health Records (PHR) app.  “A large number of individuals are now using the ABHA app to securely manage their health records in a digital format,” the official said. 

According to him, the drivers for increasing interest in ABDM include post-Covid surge in healthcare costs especially for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), increasing focus on digitisation of front-desk operations in hospitals other facilities associated ABHA cards such as digital storage of personal health records. 

Further, NHA has been providing many incentives to various stakeholders – Digital Health Incentive Scheme (DHIS) for health facilities, insurance companies and health solution providers based on the progress made in ABHA-linked health records. For active adoption of ABDM by smaller health facilities from the private sector, NHA announced the 100 Microsites project last year. Awareness campaigns are also being run on FM radio and electronic media to spread the benefits of the cards. 

The top five States in terms of enrolment are Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.

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