Centre working on digital registry for organ donation to streamline process

The Centre is developing a digital registry on organ transplantation to enhance transparency, according to a report published in Mint on Monday.

After consultation with the NITI Aayog, the National Health Authority (NHA) and the union health ministry are working on the Organ Donation Registry for making systemic changes to the National Organ Tissue Transplantation Organisation (NOTTO). The NOTTO is in-charge of organising organ transplantation across the country. The creation of the digital registry will help eliminate the presence of middlemen in the system.

An official was quoted as saying by Mint that the donation registry is aimed at revamping the NOTTO under the National Organ Transplant Progamme (NOTP) 2.0. Policies on organ donation are being redesigned to make the system transparent and smoother.

An official told Mint that NOTTO and NITI Aayog are working on easing organ transplant policies. The National Health Authority will shape the policies into a digital format. All organ transplants will be fully digitised and transparent. If authorities have a list of recipients and donors, then it will become easier to allocate organs to patients in urgent need.

At the present moment, the entire organ transplantation process is conducted manually. The registry seeks to give real-time information about donors (live as well as cadavers) and receivers on one platform for the effective delivery of services.

The registry will be linked to Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission under Ayushman Bharat Health Accounts (ABHA).

An official said that the NHA is working on four registries — an organ donation pledge registry, a recipient registry and two registries for live and cadaver donors. A centralised database will be developed using the registries with only relevant stakeholders having access to the data. Authorities have started working on a pledge registry to promote awareness of organ donation and have information on people who wish to become organ donors. a person who takes the pledge will be given a digital certificate.

Organ donations in India

According to the health ministry’s data, the number of donors (including the deceased) rose from 6,916 in 2014 to about 16,041 in 2022. India recorded 1,589 kidney transplants, 761 liver and 250 heart transplants in the deceased category in 2022.

Vivek Kute, secretary of the Indian Society of Organ Transplants told The Hindu that India’s deceased organ donation rate has been under one donor per million population for a decade now.