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Science and Technology › Computing and AI

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Digital public infrastructure and platforms

India's digital public infrastructure, digital money, and the regulation of online selling, gaming, platforms and competition. It serves GS2 answers on e-governance and GS3 answers on the digital economy.

Foundation note: Digital public infrastructure

Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM): the Unified Health Interface, the Drug Registry and Aarogya Setu 2.0

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Prelims and Mains

The Unified Health Interface (UHI) of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) is an open network with common protocols, so that a patient and a provider need not be on the same app to interact.

  • A request from any UHI enabled app goes through the ABDM Gateway, run by the National Health Authority (NHA), to registered providers, and discovery, booking and fulfilment use one common language.
  • It uses the Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) to identify patients, the Healthcare Professionals and Health Facility Registries to verify providers, and the Health Information Exchange for consent based data sharing.
  • Its four principles are interoperability, fair discoverability, verification and open protocols.
  • The Drug Registry becomes ABDM's fourth core registry, using codes from the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms so the same medicine is not entered under different names across systems.
  • Full hospital management systems are too costly for small clinics, which slows ABDM adoption.

ABDM's four registries

RegistryWhat it identifies
Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA)Individuals
Healthcare Professional RegistryDoctors and other health professionals
Health Facility RegistryHospitals, clinics and other facilities
Drug RegistryMedicines, by brand, generic, substance and manufacturer
The Drug Registry, added in June 2026, gives medicines the single standard identity that ABHA gives patients and the other two registries give providers.Source: PIB, 29 June 2026

What changed

  1. 29 Jun 2026New

    • UHI went live with blood bank discovery, PM-JAY hospital search, Jan Aushadhi Kendra discovery, ambulance booking and doctor consultations.
    • Aarogya Setu passed to the National Health Authority and relaunched as a Personal Health Record app.

    Mains: Open protocols end platform lock in and give small and rural providers equal visibility.

    PIB, 29 Jun 2026: Union Health Minister Shri Jagat Prakash Nadda Launches Unified Health Interface – The Interoperable Network for Digital Health Services (opens in a new tab) · PIB, 29 Jun 2026: Union Health Minister Shri Jagat Prakash Nadda Launches Drug Registry to standardize medicine-related information across the healthcare ecosystem (opens in a new tab) · PIB, 29 Jun 2026: Union Health Minister Shri Jagat Prakash Nadda Launches Aarogya Setu 2.0: The National Health App for Every Citizen (opens in a new tab) · PIB, 29 Jun 2026: Union Health Minister Shri Jagat Prakash Nadda Launches eSushrut@clinic – light ABDM enabled HMIS made by C-DAC for small clinics (opens in a new tab) · The Hindu, 27 Jun 2026: Govt. to launch affordable digital health management system for small clinics across India (opens in a new tab)

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