Digitising healthcare: New info platform to monitor public health surveillance in Maharashtra

The primary objective of IHIP is to enable the setting up of a Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of citizens across India. The EHRs aims to build a comprehensive Health Information Exchange (HIE) as part of this centralised accessible platform, said Dr Awate.

The success of this platform will, however, primarily depend on the quality of data shared by the districts with the state, and by states with the Centre.

To kickstart the programme, state-level ‘training of trainers’ was conducted at YASHADA in Pune and about 160 district-level trainers have been trained, said Dr Awate.

While the IHIP is part of the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), the state surveillance officer also explained that there were some differences between the current IDSP portal and the IHIP. IDSP portal is a one-stop portal that has facilities for data entry, viewing reports, reporting outbreaks, data analysis, training modules and resources related to disease surveillance.

However, the 2015 Joint Monitoring Mission report of IDSP strongly recommended a review and redesign of the IDSP surveillance system, including re-prioritisation of the list of diseases under the IDSP; assessing the need for collecting more epidemiological data for action, and redefining the required surveillance deliverables.

In December 2016, IDSP, under the oversight of the National Centre for Disease Control, conducted a disease re-prioritisation workshop and subsequently identified 33 priority health conditions for surveillance.

In May 2017, IDSP conducted a workshop to develop the Minimum Data Set for diseases and health conditions under IDSP. In the first phase, Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) module of Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) was soft-launched in selected districts of seven states (Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala). Maharashtra launched IHIP on December 30 last year.

While IDSP captures aggregate data, is a paper-based data collection system, monitors only 18 health conditions and has weekly surveillance, the IHIP captures disaggregate data of persons at all levels, and has mobile and electronic devices for data collection and analysis. It also captures real-time or daily surveillance data and monitors more than 33 health conditions. District health officers have been directed to systematically follow guidelines for the proper functionality of IHIP portal, added Dr Awate.