India’s Health Ministry partners with Dell and Tata Trusts for NCD Platform
Population based screening under NHM for diabetes, Hypertension and three types of common cancers
Tata Trusts and Dell have inked an MoU with India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to provide a technological platform for nationwide prevention, control, screening and management program of Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs). While Dell is involved in the development of the technology platform, Tata Trusts is involved in the implementation support of the NCD programme.
The cloud-based mobile, web and analytics solution has been developed to digitize health records to aid the population-based screening program. The solution is hosted on a Government Data Center and managed by Centre for Health Informatics, MoHFW.
The NCD IT solution covers program-level data for screening, referral, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up activities of non-communicable diseases with an aim to connect health workers, doctors and decision-makers in a single, integrated platform. It will provide health records for citizens, mobile applications for health workers, a web portal for the medical officers and dashboards for health officials.
The Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) screening program addresses Hypertension, Diabetes, Oral, Breast and Cervical cancers and covers all men and women over the age of 30 years. The programme, which is one of the modules in Ayushman Bharat’s Comprehensive Primary Healthcare (CPHC) Initiative, is currently being deployed in about 200 districts across the country. Implementation of the software will make it possible to track health trends across the country.
It is expected to increase productivity of health workers and doctors, and to facilitate monitoring of delivery of services by state and district administrators.
Anupriya Patel, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, stated that the government has now decided to go ahead with the population based screening under NHM for diabetes, Hypertension and three types of common cancers. “Under Ayushman Bharat we have decided to transform 1.5 Lakh Sub Centre and Public Health Centres into Health and Wellness Centres to provide a bouquet of 12 different kinds of services of which Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) form an important part,” she said.
She said that the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS) stresses on the preventive and promotive aspects of healthcare, which is also impressed upon in the National Health Policy 2017.
This technology solution has been developed by Dell, through Dell Giving, Dell’s CSR program, and in collaboration with experts from AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences), DGHS (Directorate General of Health Services), WHO (World Health Organisation) India, ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research), NHSRC (National Health Systems Resource Center), NICPR (National Institute of Cancer Prevention Research), Tata Trusts, NIC (National Informatics Center), CHI (Centre for Health Informatics), and IndiaStack team at iSPIRT and State Health Departments.
Tata Trusts is supporting the implementation of the programme in states through training, and programme management activities to ensure technology adoption among health staff and steady progress through continuous monitoring.
Anupriya Patel also released the the user manual for NCD application under Comprehensive Primary Health Care (CPHC) IT Solutions.
Preeti Sudan, Secretary (Health), Burzis Taraporewala, Senior Adviser, Tata Trusts and Sarv Saravanan, Senior Vice President, Dell EMC COE and Jeremy Ford, Director, Dell Giving were present on the occassion.
