The National Health Authority (NHA), under its flagship scheme of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), has announced integration with Aarogya Setu today. The integration is aimed at making the benefits of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission available to the users of Aarogya Setu.
With this, over 21.4 crore Aarogya Setu users will be able to create the 14-digit unique ABHA numbers from the mobile app. Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) has so far generated 16.4 crore ABHA numbers, which will help amplify this further.
The integration
The integration takes the benefits of a 14-digit unique ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Health Account) number to the Aarogya Setu user base.
Under the ABDM, a user can generate their unique ABHA number, which they can use to link their existing and new medical records, including doctor prescriptions, lab reports, hospital records, and share them with registered health professionals and health service providers.
Dr RS Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority (NHA) said Aarogya Setu has played a pivotal role amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. “This has resulted in a wide usage of mobile applications. As vaccination helps us fight this pandemic, it was essential to repurpose this widely used digital public good."
He said the creation of ABHA is the start, and that the Centre would “soon roll out the functionality to view your digital health records as well".
Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said with ABHA, Aarogya Setu has enabled an important consent-based option for the citizens, which will help them access their personal health records and useful services from the national digital health system.
Aarogya Setu app
The Aarogya Setu mobile app, which has a huge active user base, is already being used for COVID-19 related contact tracing to check risk factors, ICMR-guidelines based self-assessment, COVID-19 vaccine booking, certificate download and status check, generating e-pass, search for ICMR-approved labs providing COVID-19 testing facilities, helpline contacts, and other COVID-19 statistics and updates. The integration with ABDM will add another feature of generating ABHA numbers for the app users.
How to generate ABHA number
Generating ABHA numbers 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.
