New Delhi Newborns and young children will be issued their own Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) numbers, also known as health IDs, allowing parents to track their children’s health records.
The National Health Authority is developing a mechanism under which parents can generate ABHA numbers for their newborns and young children.
The ABHA number will enable parents to upload all personal health records from birth, as well as all health benefits ranging from public health programs to insurance plans.
Currently, only individuals above the age of 18 are eligible to enroll for an ABHA card.
To ensure this, the central government runs several programs and schemes such as POSHAN Abhiyaan for young children and newborns, reproductive and child health, and the National Child Health Programme.
These programs monitor the development of children from birth and address child health issues such as malnutrition and childhood obesity.
“The need was felt that the parents should also get an opportunity to track the growth and development of their child right from their birth. It has also been observed that when a child is born, he/she does not have any ID or documents. and it can take up to 30 days to generate a birth certificate for the child.Now, the idea is that parents will be able to generate an ABHA ID for their children by integrating their own ABHA number with the system It will empower parents to access their child’s health records and generate a longitudinal health history from their child’s birth,” said a government official familiar with the matter, requesting anonymity.
At a later stage, the system will accept the birth certificate of the child as well as other ID documents such as child Aadhaar, if available for the parents.
“Once the baby is born in the hospital, there are several vaccination sessions for the baby and the mother. In this case, we can also track the health records of the mother and the child. This will help a doctor to access their past health records for both when they come to the hospital again for follow-up check-up,” the official said.
This provision will also be available for people without Aadhaar number and babies who have not yet been named.
While the child’s aura will be linked to their parent’s number, only the parent will have access to their children’s health records until the child turns 18.
The NHA is likely to complete the work on the project in the next few months.
Queries sent to the spokesperson of the Union Health Ministry on Saturday evening remained unanswered at press time.
Any parent can access ABHA for their children from multiple sources like Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) website, hospitals integrated with ABDM, Aarogya Setu and Paytm App and other ABDM compliant- healthcare providers and government health schemes Will be able to generate numbers.
Another government official said, “The aim is to take the benefits of Aura to the last citizen and increase the penetration of Aura, allowing people to access their personal health records on mobile phones.”
“Currently, people have multiple ID documents, and it becomes problematic when it comes to the healthcare sector. Each hospital will have its own unique ID for its patients, regardless of public and private sector. And all of these systems contain many health data for the individual generated at those health facilities. Patients have to carry all physical files and documents to the doctors. There is a possibility that sometimes patients may lose these physical files. Hence, ABHA (Health ID) is envisioned to work as an ID for an individual across all healthcare ecosystems regardless of any public or private hospital or diagnostic lab etc. where patients can avail health services. go.
So far, over 223 million ABHA health IDs have been created under the ABDM scheme, which aims to support the integrated digital health infrastructure of the country.