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What is Unified Health Interface?

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A "unified health interface" is a platform that combines different parts of healthcare applications, services, features, and data into a unified interface. The UHI has become a revolutionary concept in the rapidly evolving reality of healthcare technology, with the potential to improve patient outcomes and streamline healthcare services.

This article examines the idea of a unified health interface, its importance in addressing major issues with the provision of healthcare, the essential elements that contribute to making it work, the laws that monitor its use, development patterns, and prospects.

What is the Unified Health Interface?

A framework of open standards and protocols called the Unified Health Interface (UHI) makes integration in healthcare services accessible. UHI is one of the fundamental tiers within the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) Stack. While the existing ABDM includes registrations for physicians, patients, and healthcare institutions, and the universal sharing of personal health data.

The UHI platform maintains electronic health records (EHR) of patients’s medical records, including their medical history, medicines, allergies, diagnoses, , health insurance , lab results, etc. This enables the doctor to find your prescription records in the database. Patients can also find, schedule, conduct, and pay for services provided by a range of collaborating providers via UHI-enabled services from any platform of their choice.

Why Do We Need a Unified Health Interface?

The UHI offers several additional benefits, some of which are:

1. Greater participation:

The unified health interface empowers patients to participate in their treatment by making their health information accessible to them. Within just one portal, the patients can have access to all their medical records, prescriptions, lab results, critical illness insurance information, notes from the doctors, etc.

2. Reduces healthcare costs:

The unified health interface reduces expenses by minimising unnecessary and repetitive tests, medical procedures, hospital visits, etc. UHI also enables you to share medical records with healthcare professionals, insurance companies, etc. through portal. For example, if one of your parents is under treatment and you want to share the treatment, medical records, and doctor’s notes with the parents health insurance company, without any unnecessary visits or documentation.

3. Remote tracking and monitoring:

UHI helps to combine patients’ health records from various at-home medical equipment and sensor devices.

Core Components Enabling UHI

The core components of a unified health interface are as follows:

1. Fast healthcare interoperability resources (FHIR):

The unified health interface uses the HL7’s FHIR to exchange important information between different healthcare systems. UHI uses a mechanism known as the RESTful API to exchange data quickly.

2. Electronic health records(EHR):

EHRs are the foundation of modern healthcare networks. Large healthcare systems use it to share information and communicate easily without any interruption in the data.

3. Integrating health enterprise(IHE):

IHE is an important part of the UHI’s communication framework, as UHI uses customised IHE features to follow the standards of HL7 and DICOM.

4. Health information exchanges(HIE):

HIE plays a significant role within the infrastructure of the UHI as it is needed to share health information with hospitals and doctors.

Government Regulations

A consultation paper has been released by the NHA (National Health Authority) titled 'Ope rationalising Unified Health Interface (UHI) in India'. The paper includes multiple guidelines, some of which are as follows:

• The UHI policy promises balance in the search and discovery of nurse practitioners (NPs) with recommendations. It is also suggested to convey requests without any partiality and provides accurate information to health service provider agents (HSPA).

• The health service provider agents must have specific refund policies for people who did not show up for their appointments, reschedule, or cancel their appointments.

UHI Adoption Trends and Statistics

The popularity and adoption of the UHI system are increasing rapidly, fuelled by different regulatory and industrial factors. Some of those are:

• As per a market and markets report, the worldwide UHI market will grow approximately by 48.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) by 2029.

• According to an ONC survey, 54% of healthcare providers can currently exchange data using FHIR.

• Patients can examine their integrated health records using UHI-compliant mobile apps on wearable devices for consumers, like the smartwatch.

What is the future outlook for UHI?

The Unified Health Interface (UHI) is continuously growing, changing, and influencing the healthcare picture. Some developments that can be expected from UHI in the future include:

• UHI is planning to empower patients by introducing more advanced tools and services that will enable them to engage more in their treatment plans.

• UHI is working to transform healthcare systems by working on their portals and providing accessibility to healthcare professionals and patients.

• UHI can be accepted globally by increasing the standardisation of sharing healthcare data with patients. This standardisation can help the healthcare system to be more connected worldwide.

Conclusion

The importance of the UHI in influencing how healthcare will be in the future cannot be overemphasised as healthcare systems continue to change. The unified health interface, with its potential to lower costs, increase the accessibility of healthcare services, engage patients, etc. In the future, UHI holds tremendous potential for transforming healthcare systems around the globe. It has the potential to enhance patient satisfaction and healthcare delivery in the years that follow through continued innovation, teamwork, and compliance with laws and regulations.

FAQs

1. What is the main impact of the Unified Health Interface?

UHI improves connectivity and accessibility for patients by bringing together different healthcare platforms.

2. How many health and wellness centres are there in India?

There are approx. 150 thousand health and wellness centres are operating in India under Ayushman Bharat.

Disclaimer: The above information is for illustrative purposes only. For more details, please refer to the policy wordings and prospectus before concluding the sales.

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