India Floats Global Digital System to Face Pandemic Challenges

15-05-2023

1 min read

Mains: Current Affairs & Events

India Floats Global Digital System to Face Pandemic Challenges Blog Image

What’s in today’s article?

Why in news?
What is digital health?
Why is digital health important?
What are the challenges of digital health?
News Summary: India floats global digital system to face pandemic challenges
Key highlights of the speech delivered by the Union Health Minister of India

Why in news?

Addressing the G7 health ministers’ meeting in Japan, Union Health Minister of India proposed the convergence of all digital initiatives through a global initiative on digital health housed at the World Health Organisation (WHO) headquarters.

What is digital health?

Digital health refers to the use of technology, such as mobile devices, software applications, and other digital tools, to improve health and healthcare delivery.
Basically, it is a multidisciplinary concept that includes concepts from an intersection between technology and healthcare.
It encompasses a wide range of technologies and services, including telemedicine, electronic health records, wearable devices, health information exchange, and more.
India’s CoWIN, UNICEF’s RapidPro and FamilyConnect etc. are few notable examples of digital health initiatives.
- The real-time information platform, RapidPro, is a core solution in UNICEF’s digital health portfolio.
- UNICeF’s FamilyConnect sends targeted life cycle-based messages via SMS to pregnant women, new mothers, heads of households etc.

Why is digital health important?

Empowers patients
- Digital tools are giving providers a more holistic view of patient health through access to data and giving patients more control over their health.
- Hence, it empowers patients to make better-informed decisions about their own health.
  - E.g., wearable devices can monitor vital signs and provide real-time feedback to patients and clinicians.
Treatment of disease
- Digital health tools provide new options for facilitating prevention, early diagnosis of life-threatening diseases, and management of chronic conditions outside of traditional health care settings.
Other benefits
- Reduce inefficiencies; Improve access; Reduce costs; Increase quality, and Make medicine more personalized for patients.
Support overall universal health coverage targets
- Digital health is a great enabler in delivery of healthcare services and has the potential to support overall universal health coverage targets.
  - This is because it can ensure availability, accessibility and affordability, and equity of health services.
  - For example, telemedicine allows patients to connect with healthcare providers remotely.

What are the challenges of digital health?

Equitable access
- Universalization of digital health and enabling of equitable access to healthcare services across the world, particularly for low- and middle-income countries is challenging.
- The issue of accessibility becomes more daunting against the backdrop of low digital literacy and low-level of internet penetration.
Ethical Challenges related to privacy, security and data ownership
- The increasing digitization of healthcare and the growth of mobile and IoT devices as data collection tools raises many ethical issues.
- One commonly recurring theme relates to the exact nature of the role of consumer tech companies, such as Amazon, Apple etc. who have all entered the digital health domain.
- Such companies offer solutions for collecting, storing and analysing health data which raises issues relating to privacy, data protection and informed consent.
- Analysts also raise ethical concerns relating to data ownership.
Ethical challenges related to regularisation of digital health technologies
- The growth of apps and technologies developed for a consumer market blurs the lines between what is medical and non-medical devices.
- Hence, it raises ethical challenges relating to how to regularize such technologies.
Data management
- Due to the massive amounts of data collected from a variety of systems that store and code data differently, data interoperability is an ongoing challenge.

News Summary: India floats global digital system to face pandemic challenges

Union Health Minister of India stressed the need for a collaborative global health architecture that can assure the power of digital solutions to all countries to combat the challenges posed by a future pandemic.
India’s Health Minister was one of the four health ministers from the ‘Outreach 4’ countries – India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand – invited to the meeting.

Key highlights of the speech delivered by the Union Health Minister of India

Global initiative on digital health
- He proposed a global initiative on digital health housed at the WHO headquarters.
- This initiative aims to converge the global efforts for digital health and scale up digital solutions with use of cutting-edge technologies.
- It will help move from Silos to Systems with collaboration of all countries for enhanced coverage and quality of healthcare services.
India’s commitment to provide digital tools to other countries
- He expressed commitment to provide India’s digital tools such as CoWIN to other countries for free.
- India’s G20 presidency has recognised digital health as a priority area.
Highlighted the issue of fragmented and isolated efforts
- As on April 2023, only 34% of the populations in low- and middle-income countries have access to Covid-19 vaccines as compared to 73% in high income countries.
- Highlighting the above data, he said that the Covid pandemic exposed the fault lines in the existing system.
- In this context, he called for a more robust and inclusive system, while maintaining the centrality of the WHO.

Q1) What is CoWIN?

CoWIN stands for COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network. It is an online platform developed by the Indian government to facilitate the efficient and transparent distribution of COVID-19 vaccines across the country. The CoWIN platform provides several features, including vaccine registration, appointment scheduling, and vaccination certification.

Q2) What is UNICEF’s FamilyConnect ?

UNICEF's FamilyConnect is an innovative mobile application designed to provide pregnant women and new mothers with the information and support they need to ensure the health and wellbeing of their babies and themselves. The app provides a range of features, including personalized pregnancy and postnatal care guidance, health tips, nutrition advice, and parenting resources.