ABDM Beyond M1-M3: Scan and Share, UHI and Registries for Hospitals

Most hospitals first met the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) as a compliance item: create ABHA numbers, link records, clear the M1, M2 and M3 milestones. By 2026 the mission has grown well beyond that. Scan and Share has turned ABHA into an OPD registration shortcut, the professional and facility registries have become the trust layer for digital services, and the Unified Health Interface (UHI) launched nationally in June 2026.

For a hospital, these newer pieces matter more day to day than the milestones did. They affect how long patients queue, how your doctors appear in discovery apps, and whether your services can be booked from outside your own website.

This guide covers what is live, what the numbers show, and what your hospital software should do about each piece. If you need the milestone basics first, start with our ABDM integration guide for hospital software.

Where ABDM stands: the numbers

Official figures arrive through parliamentary replies and PIB releases, so they lag. The most solid recent data points:

• ABHA accounts: 79.71 crore created, with about 65.09 crore health records linked, as of 28 July 2025, according to a reply in the Lok Sabha (The Week report).
• Health Facility Registry (HFR): over 3.63 lakh facilities registered, per a February 2025 Rajya Sabha reply.
• Healthcare Professional Registry (HPR): over 5.64 lakh professionals registered at the same point.
• Scan and Share: as of November 2024, 17,481 facilities across 35 states and UTs had generated 6.64 crore OPD tokens, with the government estimating queue times falling from 30-40 minutes to 5-10 minutes.

The gap between ABHA accounts and linked records is the useful signal. Identity is largely done. Records flowing between facilities, with consent, is the part still being built, and that is where hospital software matters.

Scan and Share: the quiet operational win

Scan and Share launched in October 2022. A patient scans a QR code at the registration counter with an ABHA-enabled app, consents to share their profile, and the hospital system receives demographics and returns a token number. No forms, no re-typing names into the HMIS.

Its value is not the technology, which is simple. It is the queue. Registration is often the first bottleneck in a busy OPD, and a profile that arrives pre-filled removes most of the typing. The National Health Authority has also tied Scan and Share transactions to the Digital Health Incentive Scheme (DHIS), which rewards facilities for ABDM-enabled transactions.

What your HMIS needs to do it well:

1. Receive the profile share callback and create or match the patient record automatically, with duplicate checks on ABHA number and mobile.
2. Issue the token into your actual queue, not a separate ABDM screen. If Scan and Share tokens live outside your patient queue management system, staff will ignore them.
3. Support department-level QR codes so a patient who scans at the cardiology counter lands in the cardiology queue.
4. Fall back gracefully when the patient has no ABHA or no smartphone. Assisted ABHA creation at the counter should take seconds, not minutes.

The registries: HFR and HPR as the trust layer

HFR and HPR started as directories. They are now the gatekeepers. NHCX expects a registered facility. UHI restricts participation to HPR- and HFR-credentialed doctors and facilities. Digital prescriptions and records carry these identifiers so receiving systems can trust the source.

Practical implications:

• Keep your HFR entry accurate. Services, specialities, address and contact details on HFR feed discovery. Out-of-date entries mean patients find the wrong information.
• Get every doctor on HPR, including visiting consultants. A doctor without an HPR ID cannot be listed on UHI-based services.
• Store HPR IDs in your doctor master. Your HMIS should attach the HPR ID to prescriptions, discharge summaries and any record shared through ABDM.
• Review quarterly. Doctors join and leave. A small reconciliation report comparing your doctor master against HPR registrations saves embarrassment later.

The Unified Health Interface: what launched in June 2026

UHI is the piece that changes how patients find you. It is an open network, built on open protocols developed by the NHA and inspired by the Beckn protocol used in India's open commerce networks. Any compliant app can let patients search for and book services from any compliant provider, much as any UPI app can pay any bank account.

The Union Health Minister launched UHI on 29 June 2026 (Digital Health News). The services listed at launch were:

• Blood bank discovery
• PM-JAY empanelled hospital search
• Jan Aushadhi Kendra discovery
• Ambulance discovery and booking
• Doctor consultations: discovering nearby providers and booking in-person visits

Lab, vaccination and pharmacy discovery are listed as next-phase services. Teleconsultation booking is part of the UHI design and appears in the UHI sandbox documentation, but we have not seen confirmation that it is live nationally. The sandbox also notes that network policy and market rules are still being finalised.

What this means for a hospital: in the UHI model, your hospital (or your software) acts as a provider participant that answers search requests with your available doctors and slots, and accepts bookings from apps you do not control. That only works if your appointment system exposes real availability through an API.

Consent-based record exchange: the piece that closes the gap

The numbers above show roughly 80 crore ABHA accounts but fewer linked records than accounts. Linking is also not the same as use: a record only helps when a treating doctor actually pulls it. The Health Information Exchange and Consent Manager (HIE-CM) is the mechanism meant to close that gap, and it is where most hospitals have done the minimum.

In the ABDM model your hospital plays two roles. As a health information provider, you make records you created (prescriptions, lab reports, discharge summaries) available, as FHIR documents, when a patient consents to share them. As a health information user, you request records from other facilities, and the patient approves the request in their ABHA app with a defined purpose, scope and expiry.

The common failure is technical compliance without workflow. The hospital can technically share and request records, but nobody at registration asks the patient whether they want their previous records pulled, and the doctor's screen has no place to show them. A working setup looks like this:

• At registration, the front desk offers to fetch prior records for patients who arrive with an ABHA.
• The consent request goes out with a sensible scope, for example the last two years of lab reports and discharge summaries.
• Once approved, fetched documents appear in a clearly marked "external records" panel in the doctor's view, separate from your own notes.
• Records your hospital creates are linked to the patient's ABHA at discharge or at the end of the OPD visit, automatically.

Done this way, the patient referred from a taluk hospital arrives with history, and repeat tests drop. That is the benefit ABDM was designed for, and it needs no new regulation, only a better-designed registration and OPD screen.

What to build, in order

Notice that items 3 and 4 are useful even if you never join UHI. Pulling prior records with consent improves consultations today, and a clean appointment API powers your own online appointment booking and WhatsApp flows.

Common mistakes

• Building ABDM as a separate module. If ABDM screens sit beside the HMIS rather than inside the registration, OPD and discharge flows, staff will bypass them.
• Creating ABHA numbers without linking records. Linking discharge summaries, prescriptions and lab reports is what makes ABHA useful to the patient and to the next doctor.
• Treating consent as a checkbox. Consent artefacts have scope and expiry. Your system must respect them, and the DPDP Act raises the stakes for getting this wrong. See our DPDP Act checklist for hospitals.
• Assuming UHI is only for big chains. A 40-bed hospital with good OPD specialists is exactly the kind of provider patients search for locally.

How a Kerala hospital might sequence this

Take a typical 80-bed multi-speciality hospital in central Kerala with a busy OPD and many walk-ins. A sensible 2026-27 plan would be: turn on Scan and Share at registration and in the waiting area this quarter; clean up HPR registrations for all consultants, including visiting doctors; enable consent-based record pull so patients referred from smaller clinics arrive with history; and expose a slot API so the hospital can join UHI as the network matures. Malayalam-language patient messages and an assisted ABHA desk for elderly patients should run alongside, because a large share of OPD patients will not self-serve.

We build this kind of ABDM-native workflow into the registration and OPD modules of our hospital management systems, and wire it to the wider healthcare integration layer so the same data serves NHCX, UHI and reporting.

Conclusion

ABDM in 2026 is less about milestones and more about plumbing that changes daily operations. Scan and Share shortens queues now. HFR and HPR are the credentials every digital service checks. UHI, launched in June 2026, opens a discovery and booking channel that will favour hospitals with digital, accurate schedules.

None of these needs a big-bang project. Start with the queue, clean your registry data, and make your appointment system API-ready. The hospitals that do will find that each new ABDM service becomes a small configuration step rather than another rebuild.