New Delhi: The National Health Authority (NHA) is onboarded Quality Council of India (QCI) for six months to validate and rate Health Management Information Systems (HMIS) and Laboratory Information Management System (LMIS) solutions that are integrated with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM).
National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH), the constituent board of QCI is responsible for national accreditation in the domain of healthcare. NABH will be responsible for validating and rating ABDM compliant solutions on various parameters including ease of use, user interface, pricing, number of modules, features and value for money or price so that potential buyers can get reliable information.
Talking about the objective of this initiative, Dr RS Sharma, CEO, NHA said, “With ABDM, we aim to encourage innovation by significantly streamlining the delivery of healthtech services. We plan to develop a framework to ensure that ABDM compliant digital healthcare solutions are accredited and rated and to ensure that consumers have sufficient information to choose one solution over another. To this end, we are partnering with QCI to develop a review plan and complete the validation and review of at least 10 HMIS solutions (public and private) that have been successfully integrated with ABDM over the next six months.”
Addressing the impact of the initiative, QCI Chairman Adil Jainulbhai said, “The way NHA is revolutionizing access to public healthcare in India through its digital health initiative is phenomenal. This program for accreditation of software solutions under ABDM for the management of hospitals, labs and clinics is a big leap for healthtech in India. Authentic health tech solutions will help healthcare organizations manage their patient journey and business more systematically according to ABDM standards. And ultimately, this initiative will help citizens of India get better and more timely healthcare and help India become one of the leaders in digitization of healthcare in the world.”
This validation exercise will be conducted in phases. Phase I will focus on validation and rating of HMIS solutions successfully integrated with ABDM. Subsequent phases will include other subjective dimensions and other categories of healthcare solutions such as LMIS, health lockers, health tech, PHR (Personal Health Records) apps, etc.
As part of this initiative, NABH, QCI will onboard digital health experts to develop accreditation standards for digital health solutions across a range of products (eg, HMIS, LMIS, Health Locker) that have successfully completed their ABDM integration. The test environment for review parameters will be provided by NHA. Applicants such as public health programs, software providers, hospitals, labs, healthcare aggregators etc. who wish to obtain this accreditation are required to submit their ‘Accreditation Application’ to NABH along with compliance with accreditation standards and ABDM requirements.
Solutions will be reviewed on final validation standards (based on international standards in healthcare software ecosystem as well as indicative list of technical standards provided by NHA). An independent team of experts engaged by QCI will then evaluate the accredited healthcare solutions and periodically monitor them for their operational performance, adherence to minimum appropriate requirements as per guidelines and maintenance of standards and user experience.
Users will also be able to submit their feedback which will be added to the rating mechanism. Ratings and reviews for the solutions will be published on the ABDM website with platforms suggested by QCI.
With this initiative, NHA aims to enable the prospective buyer to make an informed decision by comparing healthcare solutions that fall under the same category such as HMIS, LMIS, Health Locker, HealthTech.
