Punjab’s De-Addiction Portal glitches hit daily drug doses

Patiala: Punjab's Drug De-Addiction Registry Portal (DDRP), launched to digitise the state's opioid treatment network, has been facing operational glitches, with doctors at govt hospitals, clinics and private de-addiction centres reporting that the portal frequently crashes for over three hours at a stretch, leaving thousands of drug-dependent patients without their daily doses of medication or forcing them to wait for hours.The portal, developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) Punjab for the state's health and family welfare department, was designed to replace manual record-keeping, prevent medicine pilferage, eliminate ghost or duplicate patient enrolments, and bring real-time accountability to the distribution of Buprenorphine-Naloxone (BNX), the opioid substitution drug prescribed at these clinics. It incorporated Aadhaar-based biometric authentication to verify that patients were physically present before medicines were dispensed. The DDRP began as a pilot project in April last year at Ropar Civil Hospital before being rolled out to govt hospitals in select districts and later to all private de-addiction centres across the state. Doctors at Ropar then reported long patient queues, with the portal proving slow, complex, and heavily dependent on stable internet connectivity and functioning biometric hardware — a combination difficult to guarantee in busy public health settings. This further escalated situation with suppliers selling illegal drugs to patients in the long queues and the matter was highlighted by TOI in June last year.At some OOAT centres, doctors claimed that patients were even getting aggressive due to the long wait to get the medicines. "We have not had a good experience with this digital portal," said a senior doctor, requesting anonymity. "It remains down for hours, leaving us with no option but to make patients wait. As they keep demanding medicine, they turn aggressive and the chances of violence or hooliganism increase."When the DDRP is down, the entire medicine-dispensing workflow gets obstructed. Patients suffering from opioid dependency who miss their scheduled dose of buprenorphine face the risk of withdrawal symptoms, a medically serious condition that could cause intense physical and psychological distress and, in the worst cases, trigger a relapse to street drugs such as heroin, locally called chitta, a senior doctor associated with the programme said.‘Drugs easily available than medicine'A 39-year-old patient from a village in Ludhiana said, "I was addicted to three different drugs, but I am currently undergoing treatment. However, when I am unable to get the medicine, it makes me feel like giving up de-addiction, as drugs are more easily available than medicines."Doctors Flag Patient Exclusions Doctors also raised concerns that some categories of patients were excluded from the system's architecture. The biometric system had no contingency for patients who were physically unable to provide fingerprints or facial data, including those with limb injuries or disabilities. Bedridden patients who could not present themselves at a clinic had no mechanism to receive medicines through the portal system. The problem was compounded by a regulatory cap that prohibited dispensing more than a 14-day supply of medicine at a time."There is no mechanism to handle handicapped patients, or patients who travel out of state, like drivers," a Ludhiana-based doctor at one of the affected hospitals said, adding that "The medicine cannot be dispensed to a patient for more than 14 days, and patients residing in other states are simply denied medication in Punjab." A senior psychiatrist in Ropar said: "When the DDRP fails, it does not merely poses inconvenience for administrators but also jeopardises the lives of patients who depend on the system for their daily medication and risks driving them back to drugs. We urge the state govt to invest in server infrastructure capable of handling over two lakh daily users without crashing, develop an offline mode so clinics can log records and dispense medicines when connectivity fails, create clear exemption protocols for disabled patients and bedridden individuals, revisit the 14-day medicine cap for patients with documented travel requirements, and coordinate with the Union health ministry on interstate patient portability."When contacted deputy director, Mental Health Cell, Health and Family Welfare Punjab, Dr Rohini said, "We have received a complaint regarding the hurdles being faced at clinics while using the portal and we are looking into the matter; we are committed to resolving such issues and ensuring the best health services in the state."MSID:: 129509144 413 |