Doctors to get unique IDs as part of MCI’s e-governance and monitoring program
All allopathy doctors who practice in Telangana, counting around 45,000 in numbers, including 18,000-odd medical practitioners in Hyderabad will get a unique identity card. This comes under the Digital Mission Mode Project(DMMP), as decided by the MCI. The DMMP is an e-governance project the aim of which is to create a unified database for all doctors in India.
The MCI initiated the DMMP process earlier this month, having issued a notice to all medical colleges in the country about it. However, it’s said that the actual modalities are yet to be worked out.
One main purpose of the DMMP is said to be weeding out the practice of ghost medical faculty. Using the e-governance project, attendance in private medical colleges could be easily monitored, thanks to what’s called the Radio Frequency Identification(RFID) card.
According to MCI member, Dr K Ramesh Reddy, with the system in place no one will be able to fool MCI’s inspection teams. The RFID card having a biometric attendance system, the MCI will be able to detect frauds, he said.
Dr. Ramesh is actually present in the three member committee that’s behind the e-governance project. The idea was first mooted in March, 2015. It got ratified with a resolution at the very first meeting of the MCI’s re-constituted body in Delhi. Aside from monitoring faculty in medical colleges, the project will also improve complaint and grievance redressal mechanism concerning doctors and also provide a repository of their certificates as well as an online channel through which the doctors could access all of MCI’s services.
Even with all these functionalities, the USP of the project is said to be the ability to check deployment of fake medical faculty and also tracking of attendance in medical colleges-this will be possible in both the government and private sectors. Rs. 45 crore is what the Union Health Ministry has sanctioned for implementation.
Dr E Ravinder Reddy, Telangana state medical council chairman said that all doctors would now have to follow MCI’s guideline on DMMP.
Image credits: India Today