The Union health ministry will soon establish the National eHealth Authority (NeHA) which will be the nodal authority that will be responsible for development of an Integrated Health Information System (including Telemedicine and mHealth) in India, while collaborating with all the stakeholders, viz., healthcare providers, consumers, healthcare technology industries, and policymakers.

The Authority will act as a promotional, regulatory and standards setting organization to guide and support India’s journey in e-Health and consequent realization of benefits of ICT intervention in health sector in an orderly way.  It will be responsible for enforcing the laws & regulations relating to the privacy and security of the patients health information & records.

One of the major goals of the Authority is to guide the adoption of e-Health solutions at various levels and areas in the country in a manner that meaningful aggregation of health and governance data and storage/exchange of electronic health records happens at various levels in a cost-effective manner. It will facilitate integration of multiple health IT systems through health information exchanges.

Another mission of NeHA is to oversee orderly evolution of state-wide and nationwide electronic health record store/exchange system that ensures that security, confidentiality and privacy of patient data is maintained and continuity of care is ensured.

The NeHA has been envisaged to support formulation of policies, strategies and implementation plan blueprint (National eHealth Policy/Strategy) for coordinated eHealth adoption in the country by all players; regulation and accelerated adoption of e-health in the country by public and private care providers and other players in the ecosystem; and to establish a network of different institutions to promote eHealth and Telemedicine/remote healthcare/virtual healthcare and such other measures.

It has been envisaged to support formulation and management of all health informatics standards for India; laying down data management, privacy & security policies, standards and guidelines in accordance with statutory provisions; to promote setting up of state health records repositories and health information exchanges (HIEs); and to deal with privacy and confidentiality aspects of electronic health records (EHR).

The ministry has invited comments and suggestions from the stakeholders on this concept note by April 20, 2015.