Vice-President Bawumia
Government’s quest to make the Ghana Card the sole source of identification for persons living in Ghana and for accessing public services has received a major boost following the completion of works to integrate the National Health Insurance Card with the Ghana Card.
Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, launched the latest of government’s digitisation efforts yesterday at the start of the NHIS Week Celebration in Accra.
He said by dialing the short code *929# and following the prompts, one can now link the National Health Insurance Card to the Ghana Card and use the Ghana Card to access healthcare at any accredited National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) facility in the country.
“This marks the beginning of a new dawn in the National Health Insurance system. This innovation reaffirms the NPP government’s commitment in our digital journey towards creating the needed ICT infrastructure comparable to any in the developed world,” Dr. Bawumia stated.
He said, “Our rapid adoption of digital technologies has been driven not only by the imperatives of change in the global economy, but also by the need to tackle our own local development challenges,” adding “our overarching objectives in this digitisation agenda are to improve both economic and public sector governance, improve transparency and accountability, improve domestic revenue mobilisation, curb corruption and increase access to public services”.
He also said that “the scope of digitisation in the health sector is enormous. It ranges from procurement, to nationwide drugs inventory management system, patient record management, portability of patients’ records across the country, to health insurance management, and billing verification and payments across providers.
“What is key for us today is the leveraging of the Ghana Card to transform our health system. This is a game changer. All you need is the Ghana Card which has embedded in it all your important personal data. Linked to the Digital Address System and the Birth and Death Registry, we would have built the most comprehensive database of citizens as far as our health demographics are concerned.”
Dr. Bawumia also announced that integration between the Ghana Card and the Tax Identification Numbers, SSNIT cards, passport, DVLA, bank accounts and SIM cards will be launched in the early part of 2021 and together with the Universal QR Code for payments, will make Ghana a functional digital economy.