The National Health Authority (NHA) issued hardware guidelines across States and Union Territories for healthcare institutions like hospitals, clinics and health and wellness centres to promote digitization in hospitals. The guidelines provide a basic framework to States/UTs for planning, assessment and procurement of the IT hardware (including IT specifications of various hardware equipment) to operate applications compliant with Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM).

Talking about the guidelines, Dr. R. S. Sharma, CEO, NHA said – “The first step towards ABDM implementation is digitization of hospitals. Several States and UTs expressed the need for some guidelines that gives them an overview of the IT infrastructure requirements based on the health facility size. The hardware guidelines issued by NHA will help the states/ UTs in assessing the requirement and facilitate the adoption of ABDM in their healthcare institutions.”

ABDM will simplify the processes and increase ease of living by connecting the digital health solutions of hospitals and other health facilities across the country with each other. The digital ecosystem will also enable a host of other facilities like teleconsultation, paper-less health records, QR code based OPD registrations etc. The digitization of health records will ensure that old medical records of patients cannot get lost and are accessible to them anytime anywhere. Ensuring necessary IT infrastructure and implementation of Hospital Information Management Systems across health facilities at the State/UT level will play a pivotal role in creation and exchange of digital health records across the ecosystem.

The guidelines on the IT hardware specifications to support this ecosystem is available at https://abdm.gov.in:8081/uploads/Hardware_Guidelines_ABDM_e162cf7a7b.pdf. The document will help the States/ UTs in assessing the hardware requirements while planning and procurement of IT assets for healthcare institutions of all scales. The guidelines published by NHA is suggestive and recommendatory in nature. States/UTs and the health facilities have the flexibility to modify these guidelines based on local requirements and circumstances.