NMC HMIS Mandate 2026: ABDM Integration Guide for Medical Colleges

The National Medical Commission (NMC) requires every medical college in India to run an ABDM-compliant Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) in its attached hospitals and to link that HMIS with the ABDM-HMIS portal run by the National Health Authority (NHA). In practice that means three things: each attached hospital must have a correct Health Facility Registry (HFR) ID on NMC's records, every OPD, IPD and emergency patient should be registered with an ABHA ID, and the hospital's health records must flow to ABDM through Health Record Linkage (HRL) and Scan and Share. NMC uses this data to verify the clinical material a college claims. On 17 July 2026 it listed 523 colleges that were not yet compliant and warned that the Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB) may act.

This guide is for deans, principals, medical superintendents and IT heads of government and private medical colleges. It sets out what each NMC notice actually says, what the ABDM-HMIS dashboard measures, how to find out which non-compliance list your college is on, and the steps that get data showing on the dashboard. It was checked against NMC's own documents on 5 November 2026.

Key takeaways

• HMIS is a Minimum Standard Requirement. NMC's UG Minimum Standard Requirements 2023 say every medical institution "shall install HMIS" in its attached or associated hospitals, and that the Commission may use the data.
• Installing software is not enough. The 17 July 2026 Office Memorandum treats a college as non-compliant if its ABDM-enabled HMIS is installed but no data reaches the ABDM-HMIS dashboard.
• Three lists, 523 entries: 247 colleges with ABDM-enabled software but missing data, 203 not using ABDM-enabled software at all, and 73 with missing or incorrect HFR IDs (status as on 10 July 2026).
• ABHA-linked patients are what counts. Since academic year 2025-26, NMC has said that only patients and clinical material authenticated with an ABHA ID will be counted in assessments. No patient may be refused treatment for not having an ABHA.
• No fixed calendar deadline in the July memo. The 3 March notice asked for implementation within 15 days, and the July memo says "on an immediate basis", with further action "as per norms" by MARB.

The NMC notices, in order

The mandate did not arrive in one circular. It has been built up over four years, and each notice refers back to the earlier ones.

All of these notices are addressed to colleges under NMC — government, private, ESIC and deemed institutions teaching modern medicine, and PG-only institutes. We found no equivalent mandate from NCISM, the Dental Council or the Nursing Council as of November 2026.

What the ABDM-HMIS dashboard actually measures

The dashboard is not a form you fill in. It shows what your hospital's software has actually sent to the ABDM network. The 17 July memo describes non-compliance in terms of two data streams:

• Health Record Linkage (HRL): health records — OPD consultations, prescriptions, lab reports, discharge summaries — that the HMIS has linked to patients' ABHA IDs as a Health Information Provider (HIP). This is ABDM Milestone 2.
• Scan and Share: patients who scanned the hospital's ABDM QR code at the registration counter and shared their ABHA profile, creating a token in the HMIS.

The memo tags each college in Annexure 1 as "Data available in HRL but no data in Scan and Share", "Data available in Scan and Share but no data in HRL", or "No data in both". Both streams are tied to the hospital's HFR ID, which is why a wrong HFR ID makes a college invisible even when its software works.

NMC's interest is patient volume and case mix it can trust. A 2022 NIC specification for the NMC dashboard describes a "unified view of OPD and IPD transactions in medical colleges", with patient-level visit records keyed on the ABDM Health Facility ID and carrying the patient's ABHA number. ABHA-linked footfall is far harder to inflate than a register.

Why NMC is doing this: clinical material and fake patients

NMC assesses whether a college has enough patients to teach its sanctioned seats. For years the evidence was paper registers and bed-occupancy claims checked on inspection day. In guidelines reported on 1 March 2026, MARB said that "some medical colleges/institutions indulge in admitting fake patients" and listed warning signs such as bulk admissions on the day of inspection, admissions for minor ailments without investigations, several members of one family admitted together, and camp admissions.

The HMIS mandate replaces that judgement with data. NMC already asks colleges to run Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance (AEBAS) for faculty and CCTV in teaching areas. The July memo describes all three — AEBAS, HMIS and CCTV — as tools to "maintain a constant vigil on the standard of medical education" and to "monitor availability of clinical material based on Health Record Linkage of patients with ABHA IDs". In September and October 2026 NMC also made each faculty member's NMR or State Medical Register number compulsory on the AEBAS portal. Our NMR registration guide covers that side.

The three non-compliance lists of 17 July 2026

The Office Memorandum lists colleges as on 10 July 2026 in three annexures. Our count of the rows by college code gives this split between government and private institutions:

Some reports quote "450 institutions"; that is the first two lists added together. State-level follow-up came quickly. Gujarat reports named 15 colleges, and on 26 July 2026 Madhya Pradesh reports said 18 MP colleges had received notices — 10 with an HMIS whose Scan and Share or HRL data was missing, 6 with no HMIS, and 2 with wrong HFR IDs. Press reports there quoted a 15-day window and the risk of withheld recognition or seats; those specifics come from the press, not from the NMC memo itself.

Which list is your college on, and what to fix first

Annexure 3: HFR ID missing or wrong

Fix this first, because nothing else counts until it is right. Log in to the college's NMC portal account, check the HFR ID recorded against each attached and associated hospital, and correct it. Every attached hospital that treats patients counted for teaching needs its own verified facility on the Health Facility Registry. If a hospital has no HFR ID yet, register it on the facility portal — our HFR registration guide for hospitals walks through it.

Annexure 2: no ABDM-enabled HMIS

The college has to choose software. The NMC procedure gives two routes: onboard an HMIS already listed on the ABDM partner pages (abdm.gov.in/our-partners/HMIS), or build and certify your own. The memo also names two government options, NIC's NextGen eHospital and CDAC's eSushrut. Whichever you choose, ask the vendor for proof that its ABDM integration is live in production, not only in the sandbox.

Annexure 1: software installed, data missing

This is the largest list and usually the quickest to fix, because the problem is configuration and desk habits rather than software. Look at which tag your college carries:

• "No data in Scan and Share": the facility QR is not displayed at registration counters, the HMIS is not mapped to the facility for Scan and Share, or staff register patients without asking for an ABHA.
• "No data in HRL": records are not being linked to ABHA. Check that the HMIS is linked to the facility on the HFR/HPR portal with the vendor's Bridge ID, that your doctors are mapped to the facility through the Healthcare Professionals Registry, and that the software links each OPD visit, prescription, report and discharge summary.
• "No data in both": start with the HFR ID and the bridge linkage. These are the two settings that make a working HMIS invisible.

The NMC step-by-step procedure, in plain words

Annexure-I of the 3 March notice, re-issued with the July memo, covers three situations.

1. Already on ABDM-enabled software. Confirm the vendor is listed on the ABDM partner page. The vendor deploys its ABDM version and gives the hospital a Bridge ID. The hospital's Facility Manager then links the software to the facility on the NHPR portal. After that, records and Scan and Share tokens start reaching the dashboard.
2. No software. Onboard an empanelled ABDM-enabled HMIS (and, for the lab, an LMIS), then follow step 1.
3. Non-ABDM or custom-built software. Register on the ABDM sandbox (the vendor for vendor software, the hospital for in-house software). Complete the milestones — M1 ABHA creation and verification, M2 health-record linking and exchange, M3 consent-based sharing and M4 professional and facility verification — then pass production certification: third-party functional testing, a web application security audit by a CERT-In empanelled auditor, a demonstration to NHA's integration team, Health Tech Committee approval and go-live approval. Budget months, not weeks.

The NHA contact named in the notices for adoption support is pm.adoption@nha.gov.in, and the NMC contact is manager.it@nmc.org.in.

What a compliant teaching hospital looks like day to day

Compliance shows up at the registration desk, not in the server room. A college that is green on the dashboard usually has these habits in place:

• ABHA at every registration. The desk creates an ABHA with Aadhaar OTP or Aadhaar fingerprint, or finds the patient's existing ABHA by mobile number, before the OPD slip prints. Patients without ABHA are still treated; the desk records the refusal and moves on.
• Scan and Share QR at every counter, including casualty and IPD admission, so patients with the ABHA app can register themselves in seconds.
• Every department on the same HMIS. Clinical material is counted per department, so a department that still writes paper OPD tickets drags the college's numbers down.
• Records linked automatically — the OPD consultation when the visit is booked, the prescription when it is saved, lab reports when released, and the discharge summary at discharge — so linking never depends on someone remembering to press a button.
• Doctors mapped on HPR to the facility, with their registration numbers correct in the HMIS.
• A weekly check of what was linked. Compare OPD and IPD registrations with linked records, by department, and chase the gaps before NMC does.

Our Scan and Share guide and ABDM milestones M1, M2 and M3 explained go deeper on the two data streams.

A compliance checklist for the dean's office

• List every attached and associated hospital, with its HFR ID verified on the facility portal and matching NMC's records.
• Confirm the HMIS vendor is ABDM-listed and certified in production for M1, M2 and M3, and get the Bridge ID linkage done for each facility.
• Map all faculty and resident doctors on the Healthcare Professionals Registry, and keep their NMR or SMR numbers current on AEBAS.
• Put the facility's Scan and Share QR at every registration and admission counter, and train the desk on ABHA creation by OTP and fingerprint.
• Switch every department's OPD and IPD to the HMIS; retire parallel paper registers.
• Check that OPD consultations, prescriptions, lab reports and discharge summaries are linking to ABHA, and review the counts every week.
• Keep a dated file of each NMC notice, your submissions and vendor correspondence in case MARB asks.

How Healthixio fits a medical college hospital

Healthixio is ABDM-integrated hospital management software certified by the National Health Authority across Milestones M1, M2 and M3, and it serves large multi-specialty and teaching hospitals as well as smaller ones. For the NMC requirement specifically:

• ABHA at the desk: creation by Aadhaar OTP or Aadhaar fingerprint, and verification by ABHA number, mobile or ABHA address, inside the registration screen.
• Scan and Share: patients who scan the hospital's QR appear as walk-ins ready to register.
• Automatic linking: an OPD visit is linked when it is booked, the prescription when it is saved, and the discharge summary and IPD bill at discharge. Lab reports and other record types are linked too — eight health-information types in all, generated as FHIR records.
• Proof of what was sent: an ABDM Push Report shows every care context linked, and when, so the IT cell can reconcile it against registrations.
• M3 consent-based fetching of records from other providers.
• Department-wise OPD and IPD on one patient record, so every department's clinical material is captured.

The facility's HFR ID is entered once in the admin profile and used for every link. See the ABDM integration page, the ABHA module or HMS for multi-specialty and large hospitals.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is HMIS mandatory for medical colleges in India?

Yes. NMC's UG Minimum Standard Requirements 2023 require every medical institution to install an HMIS in its attached or associated hospitals, and NMC's notices of 3 March 2026 and 17 July 2026 require that HMIS to be ABDM-compliant and integrated with the ABDM-HMIS portal.

What is the ABDM-HMIS dashboard?

It is the NHA dashboard that shows, for each health facility ID, the health records an HMIS has linked to ABHA (Health Record Linkage) and the Scan and Share registrations it has received. NMC uses it to see whether a college's software is genuinely in use and how many ABHA-linked patients its hospitals treat.

Our college has ABDM-enabled software. Why are we on the non-compliance list?

Annexure 1 of the July memo lists 247 such colleges. The usual causes are a wrong HFR ID on NMC's records, the software not linked to the facility with the vendor's Bridge ID, doctors not mapped on HPR, the Scan and Share QR not in use, or records not being linked to ABHA at the desk.

Is ABHA mandatory for patients in medical college hospitals?

NMC has asked colleges to register all OPD and IPD patients with an ABHA ID, and only ABHA-authenticated clinical material is counted in assessments from AY 2025-26. But NMC has also said no patient should be denied treatment for not having an ABHA. Creating one remains the patient's choice.

What can MARB do to a non-compliant college?

The July memo says only that "necessary further action as per norms may be initiated by the MARB". Under NMC's assessment regulations, MARB's options include penalties, a bar on new courses or seat increases, and effects on UG and PG renewal. As of November 2026 we found no public report of a college penalised specifically for HMIS non-compliance.

Does the mandate apply to private medical colleges and to AYUSH or dental colleges?

It applies to all colleges under NMC, government and private alike — the July lists contain both. AYUSH, dental and nursing colleges are regulated by other councils, and we found no equivalent HMIS-ABDM mandate from them as of November 2026.

Can we use NextGen eHospital or eSushrut instead of a private HMIS?

Yes. The July memo names NIC's NextGen eHospital and CDAC's eSushrut as options. Colleges can also choose any ABDM-enabled HMIS listed on the ABDM partner pages, provided its integration is certified for production.

Is there a deadline?

The 28 February notice gave 7 days to submit HFR IDs and the 3 March notice gave 15 days to integrate. The 17 July memo asks for compliance "on an immediate basis" without a calendar date. Treat it as overdue.

Get your attached hospitals onto the dashboard

If your college is on one of the July lists, start with the HFR IDs and the bridge linkage, then make ABHA part of every registration. Talk to our ABDM team for a review of your current setup, or see the screens first on the product tour.

Sources

• NMC public notice on HFR IDs and HMIS details, 28 February 2026: nmc.org.in
• NMC notice on implementation of HMIS for attached hospitals, 3 March 2026: nmc.org.in
• NMC notice on integration of digital health records of patients, 3 March 2026: nmc.org.in
• NMC Office Memorandum on ABDM-compliant HMIS, 17 July 2026: nmc.org.in
• NMC AEBAS memoranda requiring NMR/SMR numbers, September–October 2026: nmc.org.in

Last reviewed 5 November 2026. NMC issues follow-up notices often; check nmc.org.in for anything newer.