79% of Abu Dhabi hospitals connected to Malaffi

GN Focus talks to Atif Al Braiki, CEO of Abu Dhabi Health Data Services, to learn more about the plans for the emirate's health information exchange platform, Malaffi.

You have seen first-hand how handy Malaffi has been during the Covid-19 crisis. What are your future plans for the health information exchange platform?

We have more than 79 per cent of all hospitals in Abu Dhabi connected via their Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems to Malaffi. With over 715 connected healthcare facilities, it means that almost 29,500 doctors, nurses and members of their care teams can make better informed decisions about their patients’ health. It has been an ambitious journey, but an important one, to make sure every provider — from the smallest clinics and dental surgeries, to large multidisciplinary hospitals — is connected, to benefit the health of our community.

But it doesn’t stop there. We aim to have all — more than 2,000 public and private healthcare providers in the emirate — connected by early 2021. With participation of facilities across the emirate, every encounter you have with a healthcare provider will be captured. The safe exchange of this data will then ensure continuity of care, wherever you choose to go for your medical needs. To make this happen, we must work together, because together, we are stronger. Malaffi and connectivity must become part of Abu Dhabi’s DNA.

What are the challenges of bringing all the healthcare providers into the HIE?

As we continue our journey to connect all healthcare providers in Abu Dhabi, it is important that we monitor utilisation as they come onboard. For those who are reluctant to use it, or who have not maximised the benefits that an HIE can offer, we must work hard to make sure these providers, and their staff, understand Malaffi’s full capabilities and the values that those capabilities can bring to them and their patients. We work with these providers to make sure Malaffi is helping them to deliver more efficient and higher-quality healthcare services to their patients.

The true value of the data in Malaffi increases with the onboarding of each provider, and these efforts will increase in the future as we will be constantly discovering new use cases and improving the platform based on the feedback of the community. The future is exciting.

How does Malaffi ensure data privacy and security?

At Malaffi we take data privacy and security very seriously. We believe patient care and patient privacy go hand in hand; only trained, authorised healthcare professionals and members of the care teams will be able to access your personal health information. Multiple layers of security are in place to protect your data, compliant with all emirate-wide and federal health privacy laws and data standards.