Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY awarded National Gold Award for e-Governance

Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) has been awarded gold under Category-1 for "Excellence in Government Process Re-engineering for Digital Transformation" for e-governance 2019-20. The award was presented during the 23rd National Conference on e-Governance held in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Implemented by the National Health Authority along with its State counterparts, Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY is the world’s largest publicly funded health assurance scheme covering 50 crore poor and vulnerable citizens. 

This award seeks to recognize government projects that involved analysis and redesign of workflow and which resulted in improvement in outcomes related to efficiency, the effectiveness of the process, cost, quality, service delivery.

Receiving the award on behalf of the National Health Authority, the apex organisation responsible for the design and implementation of the scheme, Dr. Indu Bhushan, CEO, AB-PMJAY, and National Health Authority said, “It is a huge honour to receive this award today. This award is not only a recognition of the sophistication of the IT system that is the backbone of PM-JAY  but also of our efforts for moving towards universal health coverage through digital transformation. Through this award we will be able to showcase the innovation and talent we have deployed to build one of the best IT systems in the world. In the near future, our efforts will be channeled towards further strengthening this digital backbone into empowering the beneficiaries, maximizing efficiency of service delivery, expand coverage of the scheme to the left out population groups, enhance convergence with existing central and State health schemes and minimize fraud and abuse with use of frontier technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning into our systems.”

The purpose of the award is to recognize achievements in the area of e-Governance, disseminate knowledge on effective methods of designing and implementing sustainable e-Governance initiatives. This award encourages innovations in successful e-Governance solutions with promotion and exchange of experiences in solving problems, mitigating risks, resolving issues and planning for success.

National Awards for e-Governance are presented every year to recognize and promote excellence in the implementation of e-Governance initiatives.

 Talking about the IT system of AB PM-JAY, Mr. Kiran Anandampillai, Advisor IT, National Health Authority said, “We have created an IT platform with the focus to provide seamless, quality, affordable healthcare services to the poorest citizens in the remotest corners of India. We are building several layers of security to protect sensitive personal patient data, therefore, ensuring that there is no misuse of the data collected and used. We are deploying advanced data analytics to monitor the implementation on a real-time basis. The insights received is helping us not only take timely action but also do evidence-based policy decision-making.

These awards also seek to recognize the national level e-Governance projects which resulted in delivering enhanced value to citizens through effective use of Information and Communication Technology. This is an effort to recognize the adoption of emerging technologies (such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing etc.) for e-Governance projects.