AYUSH GRID Project to digitise AYUSH healthcare delivery

The Ministry of AYUSH has conceptualised AYUSH GRID Project for digitising AYUSH healthcare delivery at all levels. The project is the proposed IT backbone for the entire AYUSH sector covering the healthcare systems — Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa and Homoeopathy, informed Minister of State (Independent Charge) for AYUSH, Shripad Yesso Naik while speaking in Lok Sabha recently.

“AYUSH Grid is envisaged as an omnibus digital ecosystem that would lead to all-round development of the AYUSH sector in the field of healthcare delivery at all levels — research, education, schemes and various health programmes,” he added.

Naik highlighted that this project will develop a network of people, knowledge and technology for radical, sustainable and wholesome transformation of AYUSH sector, and play a pivotal role in taking care of holistic healthcare needs (i.e. curative, preventive and promotive health) and socio- economic well-being of Indian citizens and further extending the benefits to entire world population.

He said, “The project will create an organic and dynamic information and communication technology (ICT)-powered network interconnecting all streams of AYUSH in their key functional areas viz healthcare delivery, capacity building, research and development, AYUSH drug regulation and education. This will be beneficial for all stakeholders of AYUSH as well as for effective governance. That apart, strategies for development will be in sync with the national and international policies and healthcare needs.

“The main components of AYUSH GRID Project are : health services, education, research, central sector and centrally-sponsored schemes, training, citizen-centric services, rug licensing portal and media outreach.”

According to the minister, health is a state subject and the concerned state governments adopt various measures to improve the government health delivery system, including AYUSH systems of healthcare. At the central level, the ministry of AYUSH also takes various initiatives to achieve this goal, mainly through interventions in areas like AYUSH education, AYUSH research, establishing and running national- level institutes, setting guidelines for drug regulation, setting benchmarks for AYUSH digitisation and forgoing international collaboration in relevant activities. Further, ministry of AYUSH has launched pilot project of AYUSH Health Management Information System (A-HMIS) on 05^th November, 2018. Of late, 82 health facilities (NI’s and RC’s) under the ministry are using available modules of A-HMIS. The ministry has also launched training programmes in A-HMIS. An IT course for AYUSH professionals for capacity building of AYUSH doctors in use of digital technologies in healthcare for improvement of healthcare delivery system in AYUSH has been initiated with the support of C-DAC, Pune.