Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya, the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, addressed Today at the G7 Ministerial Meeting on Health Innovation in Nagasaki, Japan.
The meeting was held to discuss the priorities, implementation and utilization of health innovations like digital health towards ensuring Universal Health Coverage. The summit was attended by the health ministers of the G7 countries and invited “Outreach 4” countries of India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand.
“Use of technology and Digital Health Tools are an enabler and equalizer which can facilitate strengthened health service delivery and aid in the achievement of Universal Health Coverage,” Dr. Mandaviya stated in a speech for the occasion. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of technology in the provision of health services and brought attention to the need to concentrate on an enabling framework to close the digital divide among nations, particularly among low- and middle-income nations.
The Union Health Minister praised India for its accomplishments in digital health, stating that “India’s COVID-19 vaccine delivery platform, Co-WIN, has monitored the administration of over 2.2 billion vaccine doses across the length and breadth of the country and monitored not only cold chain management but also assisted citizens and vaccine recipients in administration of the vaccines in addition to providing a QR code-based digital vaccine certificate.”
Similar to this, the largest telemedicine platform in the world, eSanjeevani, a national platform that was introduced during the pandemic, has already organised more than 115 million free consultations for citizens.
Emphasizing the need to embrace the advantages offered by new and evolving tools, Dr Mandaviya highlighted that artificial intelligence, smart wearables and big data analytics can aid precision medicine, personalized healthcare, genomics, and Clinical Decision Support Systems, ensuring the right treatment to the right person at the right time.
He also underlined the importance of ensuring the availability of these technological tools and stated, “India has already taken a policy decision to provide all such digital tools free of cost to the world as Digital Public Goods.”
Dr Mandaviya also stated that India’s G20 Presidency has brought digital health as a specific priority and has proposed the convergence mechanisms of all digital initiatives across the world through the formation of the Global Initiative on Digital Health housed at World Health Organization HQ.
He emphasised the importance of the proposed network-of-networks concept in closing the digital divide globally and pleaded with the G7 nations to support it.