The Government of India has launched the National Drug Registry, a digital platform designed to standardise medicine-related information across the country's healthcare ecosystem. Developed under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), the registry aims to establish a verified, interoperable database of medicines that can be used by hospitals, healthcare professionals, pharmacies, and digital health applications.
Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda launched the National Drug Registry on June 29 during the inauguration of several digital health initiatives under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. According to the ministry, the registry will serve as a "single source of truth" for medicine information by enabling the consistent identification, storage, exchange, and use of drug-related data across healthcare systems.
According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, medicines are among the most commonly used data elements across healthcare services. However, differences in drug names, spellings, formats, and coding systems across hospitals, pharmacies, and digital health platforms have often resulted in fragmented and inconsistent medicine records.
The ministry stated that the absence of a standardised medicine database can lead to duplication of records, inconsistencies in documentation, and limited interoperability between healthcare systems. The National Drug Registry has been developed to address these challenges by providing a common digital reference for medicine-related information.
The Drug Registry is one of the core registries being developed under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, alongside the Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) Registry, the Healthcare Professional Registry (HPR), and the Health Facility Registry (HFR).
According to the Health Ministry, these registries form the foundation of India's digital health ecosystem by enabling secure and standardised exchange of health information between healthcare providers and digital platforms.
The registry has been developed in collaboration with the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) and the National Resource Centre for EHR Standards (NRCeS), Pune. It incorporates internationally recognised standards, including SNOMED CT, to support semantic interoperability across digital health systems.
According to the ministry, the registry currently includes:
More than 123,000 branded drugs
More than 10,000 generic drugs
Over 29,000 substances
Users can search medicines using their generic name, brand name, substance, or manufacturer. The platform also assigns standardised identifiers to medicines, helping ensure consistent representation of drug information across digital healthcare systems.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare stated that the Drug Registry has been designed to integrate with Hospital Management Information Systems (HMIS), electronic prescription platforms, doctor-facing applications, and other ABDM-compliant digital health solutions.
The platform also provides Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that allow software developers to integrate verified medicine information into healthcare applications. According to the ministry, the registry is expected to support standardised medicine information exchange across hospitals, pharmacies, laboratories, insurers, and digital health platforms.
The National Drug Registry was launched alongside several other digital health initiatives, including Aarogya Setu 2.0, the Ayushman App, the Ayushman Sarathi PM-JAY WhatsApp Chatbot, the National Health Claims Exchange (NHCX), e-Sushrut Clinic, the Unified Health Interface (UHI), Common LOINC Codes for India (CLCI), and the Bharat Health Terminology Service (BHTS).
According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the newly launched initiatives are aimed at strengthening the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission by expanding digital health services and supporting interoperability across healthcare systems. The ministry also stated that more than 90 crore ABHA accounts have been created and over 100 crore health records have been linked under the mission, making it one of the world's largest digital health ecosystems.
(Rh/ARC)
