The Union Ministry of Health is preparing a portal to serve as an observatory for data related to all public health programmes in India. A health ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the National Public Health Observatory (NHPO) would establish an integrated command and control centre to monitor the policy impact framework of public health programmes in all Indian states.

The concept behind the NHPO will be to analyse ongoing programs and, based on that analysis, develop impact strategies relevant to public policy. “During health emergencies, this data observatory will act as a data control centre. Otherwise, it will also contribute to core policy planning,” the official added.

The official said the observatory would help the centre and states get information about new outbreaks. The policy impact framework for monitoring disease and outbreaks will be developed at this integrated command centre. The centre aims to integrate data collected from different sources for future emergency management or policy planning.

According to officials, the NHPO’s Health Readiness Index framework will integrate eight categories of data:
• Population profiles
• Healthcare infrastructure
• Healthcare financing and coverage
• Disease burden and surveillance
• Healthcare workforce
• Public health program performance
• Digital health
• Non-medical social well-being index.

In Phase zero of NHPO, applications such as Oxygen Demand Aggregation System (ODAS), Oxygen Digital Tracking System (ODTS), CoWIN, Aarogya Setu and INSACOG are integrated into the system.