An Introduction to Digitised Healthcare: Critically Analysing the Public-Private Partnership in Welfare Politics and Digital Governance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31305/rrijm.2025.v10.n11.024Keywords:
Digitalisaton, universal health coverage, resource distribution, entitlements, welfarism, commodification and privatisation, surveillance state, monopolismAbstract
The introduction of digital technology in conventional public health spaces against the dynamic backdrop of healthcare at contemporary times, has catalysed monumental shifts, notably altering and reshaping the discourse on universal health coverage and people’s access to resources. In the context of a collaborative public-private partnership approach to governance and healthcare, digitised healthcare programmes like Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), PM-JAY under the Ayushman Bharat Initiative have led to transformative changes in the equitable distribution of resources and benefits, particularly among the poor and the ones at the peripheries of the population. The genesis of India’s shift towards digitised healthcare can be traced back to the effects of the first universal health coverage program, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY). Thus, by dissecting the first universal digital healthcare program, as well as the subsequent initiatives such as NHP and PM-JAY, and gauging their efficacies, this paper aims to raise critical questions regarding the mapping out of a, “digital healthcare policy for all,” and its contribution to private health markets in the wake of an increasingly digitised public-private approach to welfare policy and governance.
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