AHD ACADEMY: DIGITAL HEALTH 101

Digital Health 101 is a basic course from AHD Academy. It is meant for Digital Health Students and Professionals working in Providers, Payers, the IT Department of Healthcare organizations, building Digital Health products, or engaged in Digital Health Transformation projects.

It is an 80 Hour course either full-time or spread out. It is free, learn at your own pace. You may contact your College, University, Organization for moderated sessions on these Digital Health topics.

LESSON 1: HEALTHCARE IT IS DIFFERENT

Note: This is a preparatory Lesson that will open your mind and help you understand the higher lessons. Reading material for this Lesson is based on white paper written by Dr Pankaj Gupta on the same topic.

LESSON 2: GOVERNANCE AND FINANCIAL LEVER

Note: This is a preparatory Lesson that will open your mind and help you understand the higher lessons. Reading material for this Lesson is based on white paper written by Dr Pankaj Gupta on the same topic.

LESSON 3: FUZZY BOUNDARIES FOR GOVERNANCE

Note: This is a preparatory Lesson that will open your mind and help you understand the higher lessons. Reading material for this Lesson is based on white paper written by Dr Pankaj Gupta on the same topic.

LESSON 4: LINES ARE BEGINNING TO BLURR!

Note: This is a preparatory Lesson that will open your mind and help you understand the higher lessons. Reading material for this Lesson is based on white paper written by Dr Pankaj Gupta on the same topic.

LESSON 5: HEALTH DELIVERY INFORMATION SYSTEM [HDIS] MVP

LESSON 6: CLOSED LOOP MEDICATION ADMINISTRATION

LESSON 7: HEALTH INSURANCE INFORMATION PLATFORM [HIIP] MVP

LESSON 8: HEALTH INFORMATION EXCHANGE [HIE]

LESSON 9: HL7 AND FHIR

LESSON 10: META DATA AND DATA STANDARDS AND NDHB

LESSON 11: eObjects IMPLEMENTATION

LESSON 12: MICROSERVICES

LESSON 13: CLOUD COMPUTING

LESSON 14: FEDERATED ARCHITECTURE

LESSON 15: COMPUTER NETWORK

LESSON 16: JAVA PART 1

LESSON 17: JAVA PART 2

LESSON 18: JAVA PART 3

LESSON 19: DESIGN PATTERNS

LESSON 20: DATABASE CONCEPTS

LESSON 21: OOPS CONCEPTS

DIGITAL HEALTH ECOSYSTEM - ACCESS HEALTH DIGITAL VISION

Congratulations! This completes the AHD Academy's Digital Health 101 Course. Best of Luck for implementing the concepts on the field.

Your feedback is welcome, Write to digital.health@accessh.org

Note: All Content is released under MPL 2.0 License. It is free to use with proper attributions.

Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator

Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator

Read details of ACCESS Health Digital SEA Program taking India's NDHB Digital Health blueprint from Paper to Practice

-- ACCESS Health Digital --

Contact for Clarifications:

Access Health Digital

digital.health@accessh.org 

Health Systems for a New India: eObjects Building Blocks

eObjects were first written by Prof Dennis Streveler and Dr Pankaj Gupta in a white paper in Nov 2018 that was published by Niti Aayog in the book Health Systems for New India, Chapter 5 - Reimagining India's Digital Health Landscape Wiring the Indian Health Sector in Nov 2019.

ACCESS Health Digital Strategy Council defined the details of the National Digital Health Blueprint building blocks - Minimum viable products including the eObjects and microservices architecture to comply with the NDHB Standards. ACCESS Health Digital runs a Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator to accelerate the implementation of the NDHB Standards through these building blocks. 

The eObjects have now been adopted by Joint working Group of National Health Authority NHA and Insurance Regulatory Development Authority IRDAI Sub group on common IT infrastructure, in its report published on 11 Sep 2019 and will be built into the India’s national Health Claims platform.

The eObjects were designed for interoperability across the healthcare ecosystem on a federated architecture. eEncounter, eDischarge Summary Objects are for Provider-to-Provider interoperability; such that the data can flow across healthcare facilities, State HIE and National Data Lake. Whereas the eClaims Object creates a Financial Lever for the market. If the providers submit the claims in standard eClaims Object format then the turnaround time for their payments can be expected to be faster. Clearly eObjects are an innovative breakthrough.

This is very similar to what happened in the FinTech revolution in India where Government of India created the Unified Payment Interface UPI platform and then created the BHIM App and released the related Application Programming Interface APIs to the market. Later the Market used the API’s and built the hugely successful Paytm, Googlepay, Phonepe wallets. In 3 years the UPI transactions went from negligible to 1 Billion transactions per month.

Financial lever and strong governance for digital health transformation, plays a vital role in ensuring successful outcomes of such undertakings. India would do well to heed this truth. 

ACCESS Health Digital team got an eGovernance Award for the work.

Provider eObjects Published

Immediate usecases: 

• ePrescription and eEncounter FHIR based Objects for Telemedicine interoperability. 
• The same eObjects can also be used for Referral across Primary, Secondary and Tertiary care.
• Epidemiological Surveillance is the next big thing. We will need eEncounter, ePrescription and eDischarge Objects to fetch the data from disparate OPD/IPD HIS/EMR systems.
• eObjects act as a Standard Output Format in these use cases.

The need for the eObjects arose because most of the Healthcare-IT applications are being developed without any standards by different agencies and vendors in the public and private sector in India. Each application is developed for standalone use without much attention to semantic interoperability. Later when the thought of interoperability emerges – it becomes difficult to connect the systems and make them talk to each other because they were never designed for that purpose.

 

Even if technical and organizational interoperability is done the semantic interoperability may remain a challenge. For example – all applications must have the same Facility master. When Application A sends the ANC data for Facility 123, the receiving Application B should understand ANC and uniquely identify Facility 123. Another example is if a hospital application sends the insurance reimbursement bill to the insurance company/government, the recipient application should be able to understand and re-present the same meaning of bill information.

Interoperability among e-Governance applications for the health sector requires exchange of information across applications. There is a need for commonly accepted data definitions for the various data elements used in e-Governance systems in Healthcare. Hence, standardization of data elements is the prerequisite for systematic development of e-Governance applications in the health sector.

The old HIS and EMR systems or even the new breed Digital Health Apps lack credible Global Digital Health Standards. Hence, they exist in silos and don’t interact with each other or the larger Healthcare ecosystem. The data cannot be referred for any meaningful analysis. For example, we still don’t know clearly the size, scale and depth of the Dengue, Chikungunya and H1N1, Flu epidemics that strike us every year. Hence, we are always left gasping for breath when the seasonal spike starts. 

India is already the Diabetes capital of the world with 70 million cases and counting. We still don’t have standard protocols based on the Digital Disease Management Platform.

The HMIS/HIS/EMR market in India requires Digital Health Standards based FHIR/JSON eObjects that can help the existing systems to communicate with the external world in a Standardized format. 

These Provider eObjects were first published in Health Systems for New India book by Niti Aayog and comply with NDHB, EHR and Meta Data standards, guidelines provided by Medical Council of India, Clinic Establishment Act and as per the latest Telemedicine guidelines released by the Government of India.

We have published the details of the eObjects on the openbodhik.in. To facilitate standard value sets for the entire ecosystem, we have also provided all the required value sets/code directories/master in an excel format.

• eEncounter Note
• ePrescription and
• eDischarge Summary

Please follow the link provided here to access the e-provider objects and related documents:

• Presentation on what are eObjects and How to use it: 
  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1i48bAib4lAdbeZqsRm2IsytdbFrYaCXk
• eObjects Details: 
  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1p622-1yaeTdu3dkHKYbHckU29XsX2R-c
• Code Directory Details: 
  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JBC7S69oMUQVrUsotI6pCg-PK7deqETu
• Sample JSON Format eObject:
  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XBh378vV7JAMaslZ2aA1Lqiw0qqnAYqP/view?usp=sharing

Your respective Healthcare Delivery Systems should be able to generate the Provider eObjects formats. You can use the eObjects as input forms i.e. if you are building a new system. Legacy systems will use eObjects as Standard Output format.

The provider e-object can also facilitate capturing of signs, symptoms, vitals and procedures data during an active surveillance, which would in turn be useful in studying and analysing a disease outbreak.

We request you to kindly use these eObjects to collect data in your respective health delivery systems, that we can together facilitate Government with valuable clinical data for analysis and planning.

Reach out to us for any help to understand or implement the e-objects. We can set up a group call with all of you to explain these eObjects in detail or even can set up one to one calls.

Thank You for your continuous association with us.

-- ACCESS Health Digital --

Contact for Clarifications:

Access Health Digital

digital.health@accessh.org