SRINAGAR: Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, today chaired a meeting of the Health Department to assess the progress on developing a comprehensive online Sehat App envisaging availability of all requisite healthcare facilities in a hassle-free manner. Besides Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) IT Department, the meeting was attended by Director, SKIMS; Principal, GMC Jammu/Srinagar and other Medical Colleges; Director Coordination, Medical Colleges; Director, Health Services, Kashmir/Jammu; representatives from BISAG-N and other concerned officers of the department. During the meeting, the Chief Secretary took a detailed review of all the components added, so far, in the app. He emphasised on making ‘Sehat App’ more comprehensive for both service providers and seekers. He urged the developers to take into consideration the future needs of the people in addition to the possible avenues that could be explored with the use of modern technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at present. Dulloo asked for making it a one stop solution for extending every kind of support to the patients. He emphasised on including subsidiary details like bed strength, specialities, distance from current location and other diagnostic facilities available in each private or government health facility. The Chief Secretary further emphasized the indenting department to lay more focus on content generations so that the app becomes more user-friendly and ready made solution for each kind of the query related to health delivery mechanism. He suggested to onboard the health insurance providers with their packages on offer along with the empanelled hospitals thereof. He made out that this will assist people to have a better comparison of each of them. Dulloo further encouraged the BISAG-N, which is developing this app, to look into the possibility of API integration with many applications developed by some reputed healthcare facilities across the country so that these too are made available here without having to redo the same under this application. Director Coordination, Dr Yashpal Sharma, threw light on the current status of the ‘Sehat App’ developed by the department in coordination with BISAG-N. He revealed that the broad counters of this app included tabs for Patient Services, Facilities for General Public, Health Care Professionals, Medical Students, Health Insurance, Helpline and Skill Development/ Capacity building for the medical/paramedical staff. Moreover, the sub-categories like information about Health facilities, diagnostic installations, drug stores, patient appointments, emergency services, blood banks, De-addiction centres, advisories, health alerts are to be provided through this app. In addition, facilities like medical resources and references, journals, workshops & courses, higher education and training would be extended for healthcare professionals. For medical and paramedical students the amenities like accommodation, course details, library facilities, would be made available. A helpline giving all important contacts and SoS facility is also in offing through this app. Once completed, it will also have provision of enhancing capacity through online courses, trainings and study materials for the staff and other concerned health care providers, as was elaborated in the meeting.
