Background: The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) aims to enhance healthcare delivery in India through digital integration. The ABDM, an essential part of India’s healthcare system, aspires to transform healthcare delivery through digitization, by emphasizing affordability, accessibility, and transparency. This qualitative study investigated the awareness, challenges, and perceptions of the ABDM among postgraduate students in coastal Karnataka, focusing on their experiences and interactions with digital health technologies. Methodology: A qualitative descriptive approach was employed, involving semi-structured interviews with 17 purposively selected participants from a health science university. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the NVivo 12 software for thematic analysis. Results: This study revealed that, while many students recognized the ABDM’s goal of establishing comprehensive digital health infrastructure to seamlessly integrate healthcare services and information systems, detailed knowledge about its functionalities, implementation processes, and challenges was limited. Participants highlighted the need for improved digital literacy and support to maximize the effective use of the ABDM. Conclusions: The successful implementation of the ABDM depends on overcoming major challenges such as poor awareness and concerns about data security. Addressing these issues will require focused educational campaigns, increased accessibility, and joint efforts by the government, healthcare providers, and technological partners.

Background: Health is one of the most important components of an effective poverty reduction strategy. However, use of health services is sometimes associated with out-of-pocket (OOP) payments. Urology disorders are often chronic and affect individuals not by shortening survival, but by impairing quality of life hence posing a substantial economic impact for patients. A well-planned health finance systems protects population against the financial risks of ill-health. This study addressed concerns over high levels of out-of-pocket payments even by those who have insurance coverage.Methods: Descriptive study was conducted among 160 patients admitted in Urology Department who are covered under various health schemes for the duration of 6 months.Results: Of the 160 study participants studied, 129 (80.62%) were males, 37 (23.13%), 64 (40%) were illiterates and most of the families 127 (79.38%) were from rural area. Various health schemes availed were, 120 (75%) Arogya Karnataka, 8 (11.25%) RBSY Kerala and 6 (3.75%) Sampoorna Suraksha. Expenses other than medical included home care assistance, adaptations to home and cost of parallel treatment. The main source for out of pocket expenditure was borrowing money from relatives or friends 70 (43.8%), self-finance 46 (28.7%) and selling valuables 28 (17.5%). Prevalence of catastrophic health expenditure in our study was 8.75%.Conclusions: The government should increase the public health spending to reduce the out of pocket expenditure by the families and the public must be educated about the availability of insurance scheme and their efficient/optimum utilization.