– JANUARY 12, 2024
Government of Himachal Pradesh has begun to implement the Health Information Management System (‘HIMS’) under which 56 hospitals will be covered in the first phase.
HIMS will enable doctors and medical service providers to fetch the complete medical details of the patient from cloud-based servers. This system will eliminate the need to carry physical records of prescriptions, medical tests and other records every time patients go to hospitals.
The doctors will now be able to access all medical records of a patient just by entering the phone number of that patient.
While HIMS is an encouraging move to provide seamless healthcare, this can pose a serious challenge in the pursuit of safeguarding the digital personal data of citizens, as the health data of a patient, which is sensitive personal data, can be made available to a doctor just by entering the mobile number of such patient. In view thereof, steps may be required to be taken to protect such data against data breaches.
