The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) is a flagship digital public infrastructure (DPI) initiative of the Government of India, not an act or a judgment, designed to create a national digital health ecosystem. The mission was launched to solve the problem of fragmented healthcare data and lack of an integrated digital infrastructure, aiming to bridge the gap among various stakeholders. Its conceptual foundation was laid by the National Health Stack (NHS) in 2018 and the National Digital Health Blueprint in 2019.
The mission was initially launched as the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) in a pilot phase on August 15, 2020, in six Union Territories. It was subsequently renamed to the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) and rolled out nationally on September 27, 2021.
The mechanism works through key digital building blocks: the Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA), a unique 14-digit digital health identifier for citizens; the Health Facility Registry (HFR); and the Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR). The ABHA enables citizens to securely store and share their medical records with healthcare providers based on their explicit consent. The implementation is led by the National Health Authority (NHA) under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The mission is closely connected to the parent scheme, Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY), and is guided by the Health Data Management Policy of December 14, 2020, which sets minimum standards for privacy and data protection. The core components have remained consistent, but the scale has grown rapidly, with over 100 crore health records linked to ABHA as of May 2026.