Now, newborn babies and young children will be issued their own Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) numbers, also known as health IDs.
Key highlights
- This initiative allows parents to track their children’s health records. The National Health Authority is developing a mechanism under which parents can generate ABHA numbers for their newborns and young children.
- The ABHA number will enable parents to upload all personal health records from birth, as well as all healthcare benefits availed, ranging from public health programmes to insurance schemes.
- At present, only individuals above 18 years of age are entitled to enrol for ABHA cards.
- The central government runs several programmes and schemes, such as POSHAN Abhiyan, Reproductive and Child Health, and Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram, catering to young children and newborns.
- These programmes monitor the development of children from birth and address child healthcare issues such as malnutrition and childhood obesity.
- The idea behind this move is to enable parents to create an ABHA ID for their babies by integrating their own ABHA number with the system.
- This will empower parents to have access to their child’s health record and generate a longitudinal health history right from the birth of their baby.
About ABHA number
- Under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), a user can generate their 14-digit unique ABHA number.
- They can use the ABHA number to link their existing and new medical records including doctor prescriptions, lab reports, hospital records etc. and also share these records with registered health professionals and health service providers and also access other digital health services whilst maintaining a common pool of medical history.
How to generate ABHA number?
- Generating ABHA number is fairly simple. The user can generate their ABHA number using their Aadhaar number and some basic demographic details like Name, Year of Birth (or Date of Birth), Gender and address (auto-populated once the user authenticates via Aadhaar OTP).
- If the user does not wish to use their Aadhaar, they can use their Driving License or Mobile Number to generate the ABHA number.
- Users can generate their ABHA number from: https://abdm.gov.in/ or the ABHA App (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.ndhm.phr) or from other apps integrated with ABDM.
(Sources: The Mint and PIB)
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