Monday, July 07, 2014

Why the Indian Government should create a health portal for its citizens

While the Indian government is rapidly adopting tools of e-governance to improve reach and transparency, there is still a lot of scope to using IT intelligently for improving healthcare in India.

A great model to learn from is Canada, which has a nationalised health service.

The government needs to set up a Health Portal, which every Indian could access, so they could get reliable, trust worthy , updated information about their medical problem. The  portal at https://myhealth.alberta.ca/health/pages/MyHealthVideos.aspx is easy to replicate.

Additional features would include:
  • a directory of available healthcare services ( such as doctors, hospitals, blood banks) 
  • PHR, which citizens could use to track their health and medical records;
  • links to the websites of other players in the healthcare ecosystem, such as health insurers, NGOs and pharma companies
  • bulletin boards and forums for inviting feedback from citizens
 This is a simple, easy and inexpensive innovation, which can help to improve healthcare for all Indians !

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