AarogyaPath: "National Healthcare Supply Chain Information Platform"
The vision of this initiative is to set up an information management and forecasting databases platform at national level to capture demand and supply scenarios for key items that are required to address the national healthcare needs in the current pandemic scenario as well as future normal and epidemic scenarios.
This public platform will help Healthcare users/ facilitators such as:
- Hospitals.
- Pathology laboratories.
- Research institutes.
- Medical colleges. and
- Individual patients.
Further, this platform, apart from providing information about existing demands for traditional Healthcare necessities, will also provide a seamless access to suppliers/ manufactures/importers regarding prevailing needs and demands for:
- Medical Equipments.
- Diagnostic instruments and accessories.
- Drugs and pharmaceuticals.
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs).
- Respiratory Assistance Devices.
- Prosthetics and Orthotics.
- Apparel/Textiles.
- Primary medical supplies and everything else needed for primary, secondary and tertiary Healthcare.
The intelligent back end of the platform will not only track demand and supply scenarios for items in Healthcare categories but also their first-level components, using unique capabilities of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India’s premiere autonomous publicly funded research organization. This holistic and comprehensive way of capturing data will help in not only ensuring availability of competitive information 24x7 as a decision facilitation for business opportunities but also try to make sure that in case of any national pandemic like the present COVID-19 situation:
- Anticipated shortages can be addressed and met at national level.
- Any national pandemic situation can be effectively handled.
- Opportunistic pricing, hoarding and over-forecasting can be checked. and
- Over-production can be avoided.
Genesis of the concept
During the present national health emergency of COVID-19 pandemic, Team CSIR strongly felt the absence of an integrated public platform to provide single-point availability of key Healthcare goods required like:
• Test Kits.
• Essential Medicines.
• Personnel Protective Equipment (Masks, Gloves, Gowns, Shoes…).
• Hospital Assistive Devices (Ventilators, Oxygen concentrators…). and
• Sanitizer etc.
It was further discovered that ability to produce and supply of these key Healthcare items may also be compromised due to:
• Shortage of Raw materials (Inputs) required for manufacturing these goods, locally or internationally.
• Logistics challenges (e.g. non-availability of loaders at ports, transit restrictions on trucks across district borders).
• Hoarding.
• Panic buying.
• Low installed or operating capacities for items not ordinarily required in trade. and
• Import dependence and geopolitical considerations
This led to the idea of development of this information platform which is named Aarogyapath and developed with a vision of “providing path which leads one on a journey towards Aarogya (healthy life)”.