DigiLockerwhich has given a great boost to the Union budget announced on Wednesday, it expects to have another major use case soon by becoming a repository for digital health documents making it convenient for people, officials told ET.
In the budget, DigiLocker has been expanded for personal and organizational support to streamline know-your-customer (KYC) processes.
“This will be used as ‘a very effective container’ for all health related documents,” RS Sharmahe told ET. Sharma is the founding CEO of Aadhaar and a former IT and telecom secretary who launched DigiLocker in 2015 and until recently was the head of India’s National Health Authority.
Abhishek SinghCEO, Digital India Corporation, under which DigiLocker is hosted, told ET that the ease of storing and sharing health documents on the cloud-based platform has been there for quite some time, but it will be “expanded so more people can use it.” use”. .
“The number of documents that are currently stored is not very high because not all hospitals are issuing digital health records. This year I expect a big increase in the number of health documents going into DigiLocker,” he said.
Currently, the platform stores documents ranging from Aadhaar, PAN card, Covid vaccination certificate, Class X/XII qualification sheets, driver’s license and ration card, among others.
“The health ministry under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission needed a place to store health records, hence the health locker in the DigiLocker app, where you can access prescriptions, lab reports, x-rays, CT scans and reports of blood,” Singh said. .
A asked how it differs from the Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) app, where patients can maintain and manage their health information in a secure environment. She said the integration with DigiLocker allows all health records linked to ABHA to be verified and shared with consent.
“If research reports from one hospital have to be shared with another hospital for a second opinion, once the user consents, a doctor at that hospital can access it,” he said. There have already been more than 17 crore health records linked to ABHA and more than 13 lakh health records app downloads.
Currently, the nine issuers/government institutions on DigiLocker in the health and wellness category are: All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Mangalagiri, AIIMS Patna, Central Government Health Scheme, Department of Health and Family Welfare Karnataka, Government Medical College and Chandigarh Hospital, Indian Medical Council of Maharashtra, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, National Health Authority and Chandigarh Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research.
“Issued documents” are electronic documents issued by various government agencies (issuers) in electronic format directly from the original data source and the unique resource identifier (URI/link) of these documents is available in the issued documents section of DigiLocker .
Launched in 2015, DigiLocker is a secure, cloud-based platform for storing, sharing, and verifying documents and certificates. So far, 145.95 million users have used DigiLocker and 5.62 billion documents have been stored and issued.
Aimed at the concept of paperless governance, it reduces administrative overhead by minimizing the use of paper and shortening the verification process.
The issued documents available through DigiLocker are retrieved in real time directly from the issuing agency. To enable more innovative fintech services, the scope of documents available in DigiLocker will be expanded to individuals and a new DigiLocker Entity will be established for use by micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), large enterprises and charitable trusts, the Budget said. .
