Project ‘Niramay

• Vaid's ICS, Lucknow
• 17, Jan 2022

Why in News?

National Health Mission, Assam in collaboration with Piramal Swasthya and Cisco launched the project “Niramay” to demonstrate the integration of digital health technology to strengthen public health care delivery in the state.

About ‘Niramay’ 

• It is a step towards strengthening public health delivery in the state of Assam by realizing the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s vision of the National Digital Health Mission.
• This initiative is based on Piramal Swasthya’s indigenous integrated health technology platform ‘AMRIT’(Accessible Medical Records via Integrated Technologies).
• This project will work towards strengthening digital infrastructure to enable telemedicine interactions, rapid diagnostics, patient’s health records and data collection at the grass-root level in three aspirational districts(Barpeta, Darrang and Baksa) in Assam.

AMRIT – Accessible Medical Records via Integrated Technologies,

• It is an integrated technology platform developed by Piramal Swasthya to create and store electronic health records of beneficiaries for public primary healthcare.
  • Beneficiaries are given unique IDs which facilitates referral mechanism in the public health ecosystem to enable receiving primary healthcare services in a way that is available, accessible and affordable.
• It is a public good primary healthcare technology platform. It helps the government in evidence-based decision making by ensuring the collection of quality data.
  • Frontline workers can use this platform for effective beneficiary management and referral tracking. With beneficiaries being the primary focus AMRIT will help them by creating a mechanism of the standard treatment protocol, reducing treatment disparities and duplication to provide quality of care.

Objectives and need: 

• The recent experiences from the pandemic have shown the importance of having a robust Public Health Delivery System.
  • Digitization and as well as public-private partnerships will play a significant role in this.
• ‘Niramay’ will enable a continuum of care and accessibility of real-time data to the relevant stakeholder for informed decision making 
• It aims to strengthen the health system at the grassroots level and improve the quality of healthcare as well as the experience of healthcare delivery by establishing a continuum of care.”

About The National Health Mission (NHM)

• It encompasses its two Sub-Missions, The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and The National Urban Health Mission (NUHM).
• The NHM envisages the achievement of universal access to equitable, affordable & quality health care services that are accountable and responsive to people’s needs.
• Components RMNCH+A(Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health)

Health systems strengthening

• • Non-Communicable Disease Control Programmes
  • Communicable Disease Control Programme
  • Infrastructure Maintenance

NHM seeks to ensure the achievement of the following indicators

• Reduce Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) to 1/1000 live births
• Reduce Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) to 25/1000 live births
• Reduce Total Fertility Rate (TFR) to 2.1
• Prevention and reduction of anaemia in women aged 15–49 years
• Prevent and reduce mortality & morbidity from communicable, non-communicable; injuries and emerging diseases
• Reduce household out-of-pocket expenditure on total health care expenditure
• Reduce annual incidence and mortality from Tuberculosis by half
• Reduce the prevalence of Leprosy to <1/10000 population and incidence to zero in all districts
• Annual Malaria Incidence to be <1/1000
• Less than 1 per cent microfilaria prevalence in all districts
• Kala-azar Elimination by 2015, <1 case per 10000 population in all blocks