India at BRICS Digital Health Summit on 3rd Septemer discussed challenges and opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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At the BRICS Ministerial Conclave, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare represented India and addressed the panel on India's priorities towards full adoption of digital health technologies at all levels and BRICS's strategy in building a cadre of competent health informatics professionals using a standardised curriculum across BRICS countries, read Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

India's expectations from the development of a repository of evidence-based digital technologies and innovations for health systems (under BRICS) and India's strategic approach to sustaining the gains from the use of digital innovations during COVID-19 in a sustainable manner towards building health systems resilience was also discussed.

At the outset, she acknowledged that digital health has become the priority in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said, "The two waves presented us with unique challenges for which an effective and humane centralised response sensitive to regional needs was warranted. Digital health was aptly utilised to manage the pandemic and enabled us for a much more scientific and data-driven approach for strengthening our response."

Elaborating on India's National Digital Health Blueprint as an overarching architectural framework for digital initiatives in India, she said, "We are implementing the recommendations for streamlining the digital health programmes through National Digital Health Mission (NDHM). NDHM through the issue of Unique Health ID will create a single source of truth for facilities and practitioners and lead to an extension of various health services through digital mode."

She informed the audience that India's immediate field level priorities for creating an ecosystem of Digital Health includes Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) implementation in all district hospitals for real-time clinical management, affordable and accessible medical consultation to every citizen through telemedicine and establishing a framework for health disaster management integrating all stakeholders, read the release.

On the creation of a pool of human resources for managing pandemics digitally, the minister showcased how India leveraged iGoT (online training platform) to train more than 16 million COVID warriors across the spectrum to manage COVID which includes doctors, paramedics, nurses, community participants etc. She highlighted that BRICS digital health platform is the need of the hour to ensure health data availability across BRICS countries in an interoperable manner to ensure the continuum of care.

"We need to work closely and collaboratively to create a repository of evidence-based digital health best practices for global good. Such framework should enable data sharing and availability and help in augmenting the global capabilities to coordinate, capture and share data for protection from disease outbreaks like the present COVID-19 pandemic," she added.

The ability of the platform to leverage existing organisations and their experiences like Global Digital Health Partnership, World Health Organisation, G20 etc. and policy advocacy for wider as well as appropriate adoption of Digital Technologies not limiting to BRICS Countries was envisioned as India's key expectation from this platform, the release added.

Speaking on the technologies adopted during COVID-19, she said, "We initiated a robust mechanism through a national COVID portal which integrated surveillance, testing, logistic management, data-driven analytics etc. We popularised Arogya Setu and ITIHAS application - Digital Surveillance Application to source data from citizens and to predict the upcoming hotpots in the community. Arogya Setu became one of the most downloaded applications with more than 201 million downloads. Similarly, to take health services to the doorstep of citizens, we are augmenting the National telemedicine platform (eSanjeevani) of India and establishing telemedicine HUBs with dedicated doctors in all Districts. The HUBs will serve all facilities in their region, for both COVID and non-COVID health care support."

She also highlighted how some of these platforms will have a lasting impact on public health. "India is leveraging the Disease Surveillance Programme through an Integrated Health Information Platform which source real-time data from facilities on 33 Epidemic Prone Diseases for community surveillance. India is undertaking the World's largest vaccine drive and the whole effort is being managed through the digital tool, Co-WIN (Winning over COVID). Co-WIN has been declared as a global good by the Government of India for adoption by any country for managing their vaccination drive, not only limiting to COVID but for conventional immunisation also," she added.

In presence of Health Ministers of BRICS nations, BRICS Digital Health Declaration was adopted. India being the host of the BRICS Digital Health Summit, the conclave was presided by the Union Health Secretary who brought focus to the wide adoption of digital health in the COVID-19 pandemic on the spectrum that includes population surveillance, active case finding, communication with common citizens in crisis, read the release.