A good healthcare system is the foundation for individuals to lead productive and fulfilling lives and for countries to have strong economies. However, the Indian healthcare system has been fraught with perennial issues of accessibility and affordability, which include:

• Over 75% of the healthcare infrastructure is concentrated in metro cities, where only 27% of the total population resides the rest 73% of the Indian population lack even basic medical facilities.
• A doctor in a government hospital in India attends to approximately 11000 patients, which is more than the WHO recommendation of 1:1000.
• Indians pay approximately 63% of their medical expenses out-of-pocket, which is considered to be the highest in the world.

In this regard, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) introduced the National Digital Health Mission (renamed as Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission) in 2020 to establish a federated health information architecture, health information exchanges, and a national health information network.

It can play a crucial role in ensuring accessibility and affordability in the following ways:

• Expansion of telemedicine: It covers various aspects such as tele-radiology, tele-consultation, tele-nursing, tele-ICU and tele-surgery. Telemedicine could effectively bridge the gap between the patient and the doctor.
• Point of care diagnostics (POCD): In the recent past, multiple applications using automated technologies which run on artificial intelligence and/or machine learning algorithms have been developed, which enable the simplification of complex diagnostic procedures to provide immediate tests/diagnosis results.
• Medical virtual assistants: Virtual health assistants and chatbots bridge the gap between patients and physicians and tend to the needs of the patients in between physical appointments through services such as prompting prescription refills, providing information on medical conditions, appointment scheduling, maintaining health records and other administrative tasks.
• Self-monitoring healthcare devices: Monitors and sensors are now being integrated into wearables, which allow them to detect various physiological changes in the body. These smart devices are capable of tracking weight, sleep patterns, posture, diet and exercise. The raw data that is collected can be used to self-monitor by detecting various health symptoms and alert the user in case of potential issues.
• Electronic health records (EHRs): An EHR is a digital version of a patient’s health records. EHRs help eliminate the problems associated with physical records such as loss of records and lack of accessibility. EHRS can be stored centrally and can be accessed at any time, irrespective of where or when the information was collected.

India is home to the 2nd largest smartphone market in the world and the country is expecting to reach 664 million mobile internet users by 2023. Digital healthcare would therefore increase accessibility and affordability of healthcare services to India.