To ensure proper functioning of the National e-Health Authority (NeHA), HIMSS Asia-Pacific India Chapter, an international organization focused on better health through IT, has urged the Centre to involve all key stakeholders in its decision making process. This, the Chapter stressed, is vital for ensuring correct drafting and implementation for successful running of the programme.

Involving all representatives from global health bodies like HIMSS, Continua Health Alliance, Personal Connected Health Alliance, members of medical devices, telemedicine industry and most importantly from patient support groups, civil society organizations and front line healthcare workers in the consultative committee is utmost important. Especially since they have right set of expertise and experience with ground realities to tackle the issues.

According to Kripa Gopalan, chair - advocacy and policy, HIMSS Asia Pacific India, involving stakeholders in the process will help in effective research and resource mapping of the current scenario in the country, which is key to understand the existing infrastructure and other dependencies. Which, she stressed needs to be done within a specific time frame to get desired impact, during which a simultaneous understanding of the 'best practices' across the globe also needs to be documented, so that it will help in the development of systems based on the local needs of the country.

While praising it as an excellent and a timely initiative, HIMSS observed that for improving the quality of care, NeHA should be developed in the lines of a national nodal body, so that it can create an ecosystem that will leverage the capabilities of both the private and public sector. Goplan insisted that this could be further pushed by exploring opportunities of setting up PPP framework and facilitate multi-sectorial partnerships, which is crucial to help improve the healthcare delivery and outcomes, while lowering the cost of care.

In the representation sent to the ministry last week, they highlighted that for proper delivery of services there needs to be an efficient co-ordination between all the national initiatives that fall under the domain of e-Health i.e. telemedicine, m-Health and ICT initiatives and within various ministries that deal with e-Health. While, HIMSS said that NeHA should be developed to act as regulator to define the standards, legal and quality framework and also regulate the practice of e-Health amongst medical fraternity based on the local needs and capacity.

Further, Gopalan stressed that for efficient functioning there is a need to define national e-Health strategy and revise it on a regular basis, while also concentrating on capacity building measures to meet the needs of e-Health adoption at scale, while undertaking research on innovations and new products and development of services.

The representation to the health ministry also highlights the importance on having a proper disaster management programme, since e-Health systems plays an important role in disaster management, for which a proper action plan needs to be evolved. While at the same time, it insists that initiatives should also be taken to set up patient portals and information network for patients along with setting up standards and frameworks for e-Training and work with medical education department for the development of curriculum related to e-Health.