India’s digital health mission has crossed a major national milestone, with more than 100 crore health records now linked with Ayushman Bharat Health Accounts, or ABHA, under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission. The achievement marks a significant advance in India’s effort to build a connected, paperless, secure and citizen-centric healthcare ecosystem.
The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, implemented by the National Health Authority under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, is designed to create the digital public infrastructure needed for modern healthcare delivery. Its purpose is simple but transformative: allow citizens to securely access, link and share their health records across hospitals, clinics, laboratories and healthcare providers with proper consent.
ABHA acts as a unique digital health identity for citizens. Once records are linked to an ABHA account, patients can access their medical history more easily and share relevant information with registered healthcare providers when needed. This can reduce paperwork, avoid repeated tests, improve continuity of care and help doctors make better-informed decisions, especially when patients move between different hospitals or health systems.
The growth of ABHA-linked records has been rapid. According to the PIB release, the number of linked health records doubled from 50 crore in February 2025 to over 100 crore in 15 months. Nearly 10 crore health records are now being linked every two to three months, showing that adoption is accelerating across government programmes, state health platforms, public digital systems and private health technology partners.
This expansion has been supported by more than 450 public and private health technology solutions that have integrated with the ABDM ecosystem. These platforms are helping digitise health records and enable their secure exchange across healthcare facilities. The participation of both government and private players is important because India’s healthcare system is vast, mixed and highly distributed. A successful digital health network must work across public hospitals, private hospitals, clinics, laboratories, insurance systems and state-level health platforms.
Several states have played a major role in this milestone. Uttar Pradesh has emerged as the leading contributor with over 15.03 crore ABHA-linked health records, followed by Andhra Pradesh with over 11.95 crore. Bihar, Rajasthan and Gujarat have also recorded strong progress, linking over 7.37 crore, 6.32 crore and 4.77 crore health records respectively.
The milestone has also been driven by major government programmes and platforms. These include the Non-Communicable Disease Programme, CoWIN, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, Uttar Pradesh’s eKavach, Andhra Pradesh’s health programmes, the Reproductive and Child Health programme, eHospital, eSushrut, Gujarat’s TeCHO platform and Rajasthan’s iHMS platform. Together, these systems are helping bring different parts of India’s health infrastructure into one interoperable digital framework.
The deeper importance of this achievement lies in the creation of longitudinal health records. In a country as large as India, patients often visit multiple healthcare providers over their lifetime. Without a connected digital record, critical information about past illnesses, prescriptions, diagnostic tests, vaccinations, hospitalisations and chronic conditions may remain scattered. ABHA-linked records can help create a more complete medical profile for citizens, improving treatment quality and reducing fragmentation in care.
Privacy and consent remain central to the ABDM model. The mission uses a consent-based health information exchange mechanism, meaning citizens can decide when and with whom to share their medical records. This is essential because health data is sensitive. A digital health system can succeed only when it combines convenience with trust, security and citizen control over personal information.
Dr. Sunil Kumar Barnwal, CEO of the National Health Authority, described the linking of over 100 crore health records with ABHA as an important milestone in the journey of ABDM. He said ABHA-linked records empower citizens with secure and consent-based access to health information and support continuity of care across the healthcare ecosystem.
ABDM’s digital building blocks include ABHA, the Healthcare Professionals Registry, the Health Facility Registry, the Health Information Exchange and Consent Manager, the Unified Health Interface and the National Health Claims Exchange. Together, these components are meant to make India’s healthcare system more interoperable, efficient and patient-focused.
Overall, the crossing of 100 crore ABHA-linked health records is not just a statistical milestone. It reflects India’s transition towards a digital health architecture where citizens can carry their medical records securely, hospitals can access information with consent, and healthcare delivery can become faster, more coordinated and less dependent on paper files. For a country with India’s population scale and healthcare diversity, this is a major step towards a more connected and future-ready health system.
