Healthcare Efficiency at the Cost of Privacy

Context: India’s latest initiative of an Aadhar like Heath ID for every India could ease healthcare services, but also raises questions regarding confidentiality and privacy.

Positives of the Digital Health ID

• Increased Efficiency and Ease of Access:

• Every detail will be only a few clicks or swipes away.
• Doctors could attend to an emergency case, for example, with alacrity

• Patient-Oriented System: rather than just a billing system being implemented abroad and can let private agencies in. 
• Voluntary and Non-Coercive: and its confidentiality is said to be assured.

• Extracting resources from Data: 

• The analysis of its anonymized data could have research value.
• It could even guide public health policy.

Challenges to the promotion of Digital Health ID

• Network Effects: and adoption of it by the health providers will make it hard to opt-out of the system.

• No legislative provision: that grants citizens exclusive ownership of data, which could compromise privacy and exposes the data to misuse.

• Social Implications: Leakage of data, which is common even with the Aadhar system, can lead to untouchability like situations as witnessed from the HIV scare.

Way Forward: 

• Strengthening Citizen’s ownership of data: A robust law that assures us legal control over our data stored anywhere on our behalf.

• For E.g. Citizens should have a right to be forgotten – to have all their files erased if they choose.