One of the major highlights of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 100 days action plan was the aim to improve the performance of the health sector in the country. In order to improve the health literacy and to provide authentic health information, Union Health Minister JP Nadda had launched the National Health Portal (NHP) at the Health pavilion of India International Trade Fair, in November last year.
The portal addresses one of the common problems like availability of reliable, high quality information for the promotion of health amongst the people. National Health Portal (NHP) aims to resolve this issue by acting as a single point of access for authentic health information and promote health literacy amongst a wide spectrum of users including general public, students, health care professionals and researchers.
In today’s age there is no dearth of information available on the web, but it is available in scattered form. The NHP acts as the first point of access for any health information. The portal has detailed information on various topics ranging from handy health tips, disease based information, government health policies and programs, disaster management, health facilities around you, laws and governance, redressal mechanism, healthy lifestyle, career options for students and other health related information.Indian Government has been taking initiatives to revive traditional medicine and NHP goes a step further in promoting the same by giving in depth information about AYUSH.
(Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy)
A prominent feature of this portal is the voice web. The voice web is a 24X7 toll free helpline (1800-180-1104), which was launched by Nadda on July 2 as a part of Digital India Week wherein best practices and innovations in public health care systems were recognised. The NHP voice web is capable of recognising user voice input. Currently the information is available in English, Hindi, Tamil, Bangla and Gujarati languages.