Co-WIN To Be Used For Making Organ Donation Transparent, Connect Blood Donors: Govt Official

India's Covid vaccination platform Co-WIN will be repurposed as an organ donation platform for making the present system transparent and also for connecting patients with suitable blood donors around their location, a top government official said here on Friday.

Speaking at Vivatech 2022, Co-WIN chief and CEO of the National Health Authority R S Sharma said that the platform will be used for various use cases in the health sector domain like immunisation programme, blood donation, organ donation and Ayushman Bharat Digital mission.

"Nobody knows if there is any person nearby who can donate the blood or a nearby blood bank which has this (blood group as required) kind of blood. We will put everybody on this (blood donation) platform which can become an extremely dynamic blood donation platform. Like (in case of) Covid you can see which vaccines are available, for blood also you can see which donors are available nearby," Sharma said.

The Co-WIN platform is at present only focused on the COVID-19 vaccination programme and facilitating information and documents related to it. Sharma said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is very keen on using the Co-WIN platform for organ donation.

"Organ donation is in a pitiable situation, I must admit, in India, where there is a lot of non-transparency in the whole system. We can make the entire system transparent, "Sharma said. He said that the Co-WIN portal will be used for national digital health missions.

"The essential idea is that we should use the learning from these platforms to deliver more and more health services," Sharma said. The Co-WIN platform is being made ready to alert parents of children about their vaccination programme.

He said that the PM wants to make Co-WIN platform technology an open platform because it is a tool for digital public good. "We are now giving it as a digital public good free of cost to any country who wants it," Sharma said.

He said that over 130 countries are in discussion with India for learning and adopting Co-WIN platform technology.