Integration will be beneficial to public for availing varied options for health needs (Representational)
The operational integration of Ayush Grid, the emerging IT backbone for AYUSH Sector, with the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) was endorsed at a high-level meeting chaired by Rajesh Kotecha Secretary, Ministry of AYUSH.
The Ayush Grid team and the NDHM have already held several rounds of discussions in the matter and reached understanding on the modalities involved. This integration will be immensely beneficial to the public for availing varied options for their health needs.
According to the Ministry of AYUSH, the integration will also accelerate the mainstreaming of Ayush disciplines of healthcare. Notably, Secretary (AYUSH) has also reviewed the current status of IT initiatives undertaken under the Ayush Grid project.
It was observed that in the last two years, Ayush Grid project has succeeded in bridging the digital gap in the Ayush sector and also in implementing various critical healthcare IT projects.
"The Ayush Grid project was initiated by the Ministry in 2018 for creating a comprehensive IT backbone for the entire sector. Digitalization of the entire Ayush Sector will lead to its transformation in fields of health care delivery at all levels, including research, education, various health programmes and drug regulations," the Ministry said in a statement on Friday.
It said that this will be beneficial for all stakeholders of Ayush including citizens of the country and in turn, will help to achieve various national and global goals in healthcare.
"The most significant among the different initiatives implemented so far in the project is the AYUSH Health Management Information System (AHMIS). Originally based on THERAN, an HMIS developed in-house by the Siddha Research Council, Chennai, the AHMIS has now emerged into a robust, cloud-based Information System used by nearly 100 clinical establishments of the AYUSH Ministry," the statement said.
"Further, the services of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bangalore has recently been enlisted to rapidly enhance its scope. The Ministry is also preparing to deploy AHMIS to Ayush units outside the Central Government umbrella, so that the entire Ayush Sector can make use of it," the statement added.
It said that another success of Ayush Grid is the development and implementation of the Ayush Sanjivani mobile app and the Yoga locator mobile app, to meet the urgent demands of the concerned Divisions of the Ministry.
"These applications have a combined down-load number of 6 lakhs, and have served their objective of reaching out to a large audience in a short time satisfactorily. During the initial weeks of COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry launched various crowdsourcing activities for gathering COVID-19 inputs as well as mobilising Ayush volunteers," it said.
The Ministry further said that a COVID-19 dashboard was also set up for real-time information and added that the Ayush Grid project was able to support such critical initiatives related to managing the health crisis, despite various lockdown-related constraints.
Under the Ayush Grid, a customised IT course for Ayush Professionals was developed in collaboration with C-DAC, Pune. Nearly 200 Ayush professionals including a few from stake-holding institutions outside government were trained as part of this initiative.
The Ministry said that an ambitious project to support Ayush education is being launched with the name Ayush Next, which has been developed and is expected to go online soon.
The components of Ayush Grid initiative will cover all the verticals of the Ayush Sector, like Health Services, Education, Ayush Research, Central Sector and Centrally Sponsored Schemes, Training Programmes, Citizen-Centric Services, Drug Licencing Portal, and Media Outreach.
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