India has taken a significant step towards strengthening its digital healthcare infrastructure with the launch of its first national drug registry, a centralised digital repository that will serve as a single, verified source of information on medicines available in the country.
Launched by Union Health Minister JP Nadda under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), the registry seeks to standardise medicine-related information across hospitals, pharmacies and digital health platforms, reducing inconsistencies that often arise when the same medicine is marketed under multiple brand names or recorded in different formats.
Officials said the platform has been developed to improve clinical decision-making, patient safety and interoperability by creating a common digital language for medicines across India's healthcare ecosystem.
At present, the registry contains more than 1.23 lakh branded medicines, over 10,000 generic drugs and more than 29,000 pharmaceutical substances, making it one of the country's largest digital databases of medicines.
A senior Health Ministry official said the registry addresses a long-standing challenge in healthcare delivery where medicines containing the same active ingredient are often documented differently across hospitals and healthcare systems.
"Across India's healthcare ecosystem, medicines are often recorded differently despite containing the same active ingredient. Such variations create confusion in prescribing, dispensing and maintaining medical records, while also affecting continuity of care and digital integration," the official said.
He said the registry would now provide a standardised framework for identifying, storing, exchanging and using medicine-related information across healthcare systems.
"By assigning every medicine a standardised digital identity, the registry will improve clinical decision-making, patient safety and interoperability across digital health platforms," the official added.
The ministry expects the initiative to improve the accuracy of electronic prescriptions, minimise duplication in medical records, strengthen drug supply chain management and facilitate seamless exchange of medicine-related information between hospitals, pharmacies, healthcare providers and digital health applications.
The Drug Registry is the fourth foundational registry under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, which already includes the Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) Registry for citizens, the Healthcare Professional Registry (HPR) and the Health Facility Registry (HFR).
The platform has been jointly developed by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) and the National Resource Centre for Electronic Health Record Standards (NRCeS), Pune.
Built on internationally accepted standards, including SNOMED CT, the registry enables semantic interoperability, allowing different healthcare software systems to understand and exchange medicine-related information in a uniform manner.
Healthcare professionals can search medicines using generic names, brand names, active pharmaceutical ingredients or manufacturers, making it easier to identify medicines regardless of the brand under which they are sold.
Officials said this standardisation would also support the government's efforts to encourage generic prescribing while reducing medication errors arising from confusion over multiple brand names.
The 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 provides open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), enabling hospitals and digital health developers to integrate the registry into their existing systems with minimal changes," the official said.
The government expects the common medicine database to improve interoperability between healthcare providers, pharmacies, insurers and digital health platforms, ensuring smoother exchange of patient information across institutions.
The officer said the registry would also support public health programmes, medical research and policy planning by generating standardised medicine-related data that can be analysed across healthcare settings.
