The government will be conducting population-based screenings for diabetes, hypertension and three types of common cancers under National Health Mission (NHM), the Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Anupriya Patel said on September 20.

"Under Ayushman Bharat we have decided to transform 1.5 lakh sub-centre and public health centres into health and wellness centres to provide a bouquet of 12 different kinds of services of which Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) also forms an important part," she further added.

NCD screening programme addresses hypertension, diabetes, oral, breast and cervical cancers and covers all men and women over the age of 30 years. The programme, which is one of the modules in Ayushman Bharat's Comprehensive Primary Healthcare (CPHC) Initiative, is currently being deployed in about 200 districts across the country. 

The Health ministry also exchanged Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with Dell and Tata Trusts in order to provide a technological platform for prevention, control, screening and management program of NCDs. Aimed at bringing healthcare technology transformation in CPHC NCD, the Health Ministry is working with Dell as technology partner and the Tata Trusts as deployment partner. 

A cloud-based mobile, web and analytics solution has been developed to digitize health records to aid the population-based screening program, to bring quality health services at door step, enable increased productivity for health workers and doctors and to facilitate monitoring of delivery of services by state and district administrators. "This software application will help in plugging gaps at the field level. Through implementation of the software, it will also be possible to track health trends across the country," she added.