Citizen
You are the person the health records are about. You build nothing and call nothing. You hold an identity, and you decide who sees what.
Who you are in ABDM
Your identity is an ABHA, the Ayushman Bharat Health Account. It has two parts.
| ABHA number | ABHA address | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | 14 digits, such as 91-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX | A readable name, such as name@abdm |
| How you get it | After an Aadhaar based KYC check passes | You choose it, or you are issued a default |
| What it does | Anchors one person to one number | Routes records and consent requests to you |
You can hold an address without a number, created from a mobile number, name, age and gender. That profile is self declared and carries no KYC.
A PHR app holds your account and acts for you. Hospitals, laboratories and pharmacies address records to your ABHA address.
What you can do
- Create an ABHA, by Aadhaar OTP, face authentication, biometrics or a demographic match.
- Share your profile at a counter by scanning the facility's QR code, and see what is being shared before you agree.
- Search for a facility you visited, find records nobody has linked yet, and link them to your address.
- Read a consent request in full: who is asking, why, which record types, which dates, and how long the access lasts.
- Narrow it before you approve. You can change the access duration, the record date range, the data categories and the validity period.
- Grant, deny, or revoke later. Revoking stops sharing under that consent immediately.
Why it is worth it
Your records stay in the systems that created them. The HIE-CM holds identifiers, pointers and consent, never the record itself. Nothing central collects your health history.
One address pulls records from many facilities into one app you choose. A permission you give is scoped and time boxed rather than open ended. Both sides of a transfer report it, so an exchange under your consent leaves a trail you can see.
Next
Consent explains what a request carries and the states it moves through.