ABHA

The Ayushman Bharat Health Account — India's unique health identity for citizens.

ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Health Account, formerly "Health ID") is the patient identity layer of ABDM. It has two related identifiers:

Identifier	Format	Purpose
ABHA number	14 digits (e.g. `91-1234-5678-9012`)	Permanent, unique health identity issued after KYC
ABHA address	`username@abdm` (sandbox: `@sbx`)	Routable address that points to the patient's consent manager, like an email for health data

A patient can have exactly one ABHA number, but may hold multiple ABHA addresses (e.g. from different PHR apps). The ABHA address is what appears in consent and data-flow APIs.

Creation methods

The primary KYC-verified flow. OTP is sent to the patient's Aadhaar-registered mobile. Yields a fully verified ABHA with demographic details pulled from Aadhaar. Demographics-based and biometric (fingerprint) variants exist for assisted flows at facilities.

Aadhaar handling

If you collect Aadhaar numbers for ABHA creation, you must encrypt them with the ABHA service's public key before transmission and must not store them. Follow UIDAI and NHA data-privacy requirements strictly.

Typical enrolment flow (Aadhaar OTP)

sequenceDiagram
  participant App as Your App
  participant ABHA as ABHA Service
  App->>ABHA: Request OTP (encrypted Aadhaar number)
  ABHA-->>App: txnId
  App->>ABHA: Submit OTP + mobile number (txnId)
  ABHA-->>App: ABHA number + profile + tokens
  App->>ABHA: Create ABHA address (choose username)
  ABHA-->>App: ABHA address linked

The v3 enrolment APIs consolidate these steps under /v3/enrollment/... endpoints with encrypted payloads (RSA-encrypted OTP/Aadhaar values, txnId correlation). Older v1/v2 healthid APIs are still referenced in many PDFs — check which family your certification requires.

Verification (returning patients)

For a returning patient you verify rather than create:

ABHA number + OTP (Aadhaar or ABHA-registered mobile)
ABHA address + password/OTP
Scan ABHA QR — the ABHA app displays a QR containing the patient's details; scanning it is the fastest front-desk flow.
Demographic auth — name + gender + year of birth match against a verified ABHA (for assisted/offline settings).

Successful verification returns tokens (e.g. a linkToken in v3) that you use to link care contexts to the patient's account.

What you store

Store the ABHA number and/or ABHA address against your internal patient record — treat them like any other sensitive identifier:

Example: patient record fields

{
  "patientId": "internal-uuid",
  "abhaNumber": "91-1234-5678-9012",
  "abhaAddress": "sunita.sharma@abdm",
  "abhaVerifiedAt": "2025-01-15T10:30:00Z"
}

Milestone 1 guide

Implement ABHA creation, verification, and linking end-to-end.

Care Contexts & Linking

What happens after you have a verified ABHA.

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