Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi

New Delhi, Jun 30: Union Health Minister JP Nadda on Monday launched the Unified Health Interface (UHI), an interoperable digital healthcare network under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), aimed at enabling citizens to discover, book and access verified healthcare services across multiple digital platforms.

The new platform has been launched as the service layer of ABDM to address fragmentation in India’s digital health ecosystem by allowing patients and healthcare providers to connect without being restricted to a single application.

The Health Ministry said that currently, users and healthcare providers need to be present on the same application to interact, limiting access and choices. UHI aims to remove this barrier by creating a common digital framework where different health applications can communicate with each other.

UHI operates through open protocols on the ABDM Gateway, developed and maintained by the National Health Authority (NHA). When a citizen searches for a healthcare service through a UHI-enabled application, the request is routed through the gateway to registered healthcare providers, allowing service discovery, appointment booking and delivery.

The platform uses the Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) as the patient identifier, while the Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) and Health Facility Registry (HFR) are used to verify doctors and healthcare facilities. Health records will be shared only through consent-based mechanisms under the Health Information Exchange system.

The ministry said UHI has been developed around four key principles — interoperability, fair discoverability, verification and open protocols. It will provide every verified healthcare provider, irrespective of size, location or digital platform, an equal opportunity to be accessed by citizens using any UHI-compatible application.

Officials said the initiative is expected to improve access to reliable healthcare services, especially in semi-urban and rural areas where patients often depend on informal sources to find doctors and medical facilities.

For healthcare providers, including individual doctors, small clinics and diagnostic centres, UHI will provide access to a wider network of patients without dependence on any single digital platform.

The open architecture of the network is also expected to encourage innovation by enabling developers to create healthcare applications in multiple languages and for different devices.

The ministry said four citizen services have already been made operational through UHI-enabled applications in the first phase.

In the next phase, the network will be expanded to include discovery and booking of laboratory diagnostic services, vaccination centres, licensed pharmacies and government-run pharmacy outlets.

The platform will also allow citizens to access healthcare services offered under various government health schemes through the same digital network.

The long-term vision of UHI is to establish a nationwide open digital health infrastructure where citizens can access verified healthcare services through any compatible application, while healthcare providers across regions and sizes can participate in the digital ecosystem.