Unique health identifier

Why it matters

Without a common identifier, the same patient appears as several people across a health system, and results, prescriptions and referrals are lost between facilities. Programme counts also depend on knowing whether two visits belong to one person or two. Identity coverage remains incomplete: the World Bank estimated at the end of 2022 that just under 850 million people worldwide had no official identity document [1].

Key points

• A health identifier may be issued by the health sector or derived from a national identity system; either way it is issued once per person.
• Identifiers do not remove the need for patient matching, because patients do not always carry or remember their number [2].
• India reported 79.71 crore Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) identifiers created by 2025 [3].
• A national client registry maintains the identifier and its links to facility records.

In Moana

Every patient in the Moana EHR carries a Moana ID across departments, and records can be exchanged with a national client registry through FHIR R4.

Sources

1. 850 million people globally do not have ID: why this matters and what we can do about it, World Bank, 2023
2. Patient identification and matching final report, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 2014
3. 79.71 crore ABHA accounts created, over 65 crore health records linked, Digital Health News, 2025