India’s Health Ministry All Set To Form A National Health Info System

According to a report by the F&B News, the ministry of health and family welfare is currently working on setting up a National Health Information System. Not only this, the ministry is going to make the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) an integral part of this system with help coming in from the World Health Organization (WHO) as well.

The National Health Info System

Explaining the need for this info system, Pawan Kumar Agarwal, chief executive officer of FSSAI told F&B News, “If there would be a food-borne illness, there will be a procedure to identify the source of the illness and the testing of the food, which we only can do. That way we could assist the system to build a robust data bank on the subject.”

The WHO has said that such a system is meant for data generation, compilation, analysis and synthesis, and communication and use. In the case of a health info system, the system will collect the data from the health sector along with other relevant sectors, analyse it and check the quality, relevance and timeliness. This helps in taking the correct measures and decision with regards to health.

“The information system also serves broader ends, providing an alert and early warning capability, supporting patient and health facility management, enabling planning, supporting and stimulating research, permitting health situation and trends analysis, supporting global reporting, and underpinning communication of health challenges to diverse users like policy-makers, planners, managers, health care providers, communities and individuals,” said WHO in a statement according to the report by F&B News.