Healthcare is a priority
aspect for governments across the world. However, despite the urgency
for an effective healthcare system, timely and cost effective
healthcare services are not readily available. This is more so in
developing nations where healthcare services are very poor and are
available to selective few only.
There are many facets of
technology driven healthcare industry in India. These include online
pharmacies, telemedicine, e-health, m-health, etc. India is yet to
start working on these aspects on the fronts of technology and legal
frameworks. We have no dedicated online
pharmacy, telemedicine,
e-health,
m-health,
data
protection (pdf), privacy
and other related techno
legal framework in India as on date.
However, some positive
steps have been taken by successive governments in India. For
instance, the Electronic
Health Record (EHR) Standards of India have been
prescribed and establishment of a National
E-Health Authority (NeHA) of India has also been proposed.
Further, if we remove the shortcomings
of Digital India project then the same can be used for
e-health purposes as well. Digital India is presently suffering from
lack of cyber
security and absence of civil
liberties protection in India. Another limitation of
Digital India that it inherited from its predecessor National
e-Governance Plan (NeGP) is absence of mandatory e-delivery
of services in India. As on date there is no
mandatory obligation to provide e-delivery of services in
India and this is sufficient to avoid the same.
It has been reported that
the health ministry of India has worked out a detailed e-health
project under digital India initiative of the government. The project
would include hospital information system, electronic health record
facilitated with health information exchange, online delivery of
services, citizen portal, online monitoring systems for services and
others. The health ministry is also developing a digital platform -
Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) - to enable creation of
inter-operable health record which can be made available and
accessible nationwide.
Perry4Law
Organisation (P4LO) welcomes this initiative of health
ministry. However, we also strongly recommend that a techno legal
regulatory framework must be urgently formulated by Indian government
to manage the complicated issues of Indian cyberspace and Digital
India. We also recommend that telemedicine and online pharmacy laws
must be complied
with by the businesses and entrepreneurs of India that are
ignored presently. Similarly, legal
issues of cloud computing in India must also be kept in
mind by e-health service providers of India. We hope these issues
would be considered by Indian government while formulating an
e-health related law in India.
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