NITI AAYOG unveiled the blue print of National Health Stack, a shared digital healthcare infrastructure. It is in accordance with National Health Policy 2017 had also envisaged creation of a digital health technology ecosystem aimed at developing an integrated health information system that serves the needs of all stakeholders

• It is in line with the implementation of the Centre’s flagship scheme Ayushman Bharat and other public healthcare programmes in the country.
• It envisages a centralized health record for all citizens of the country in order to streamline the health information and facilitate effective management of the same.
• The components include national health electronic registries, a coverage and claims platform, a federated personal health records framework, a national health analytics platform among others.
  The proposed NHS is an approach to address the challenge and seeks to employ latest technology including Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence, a state of the art Policy Mark-up Language and create a unified health identity of citizens – as they navigate across services across levels of care, i.e. Primary, Secondary and Tertiary and also across Public and Private.
• This will allow policy makers to further build their projections around upcoming outcomes, experiment with new services as well as fill the existing gaps in the Indian healthcare industry among others.

• Allow states to incorporate horizontal and vertical expansion of scheme
• Avoid duplication of efforts.
• Enable ease of adoption for those without systems or with dysfunctional systems in place.
• The registrant may create a virtual health ID to preserve their privacy when interacting with other users or stakeholders in the system.
• Once implemented, it is expected that National Health Stack will significantly “bring down the costs of health protection, converge disparate systems to ensure a cashless and seamlessly integrated experience for the poorest beneficiaries, and promote wellness across the population

NHS will not only allow policy makers to experiment with policies, detect fraud in health insurance, measure outcomes and move towards smart policy making, but also engage market players (NGOs, researchers, watchdog organisations) to innovate and build relevant services and fill the gaps.