Abu Dhabi's AI-powered Patient Safety System now links all hospitals

Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi is strengthening its proactive approach to patient safety through a system designed to detect risks before they occur.

The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH) has announced that, one year after the launch of the system, it now connects 100% of hospitals across the emirate, in addition to long-term care facilities, dialysis centres and fertility centres, and serves more than 60,000 users.

The system enables patient safety data to be leveraged through an integrated, sector-wide perspective, providing a broader understanding of risks and safety trends across the healthcare system.

Moving from response to prediction and prevention

DoH has strengthened its proactive approach to patient safety by supporting a shift from responding to incidents after they occur to predicting and preventing them through its Patient Safety System.

The unified system, the first of its kind in the region, is powered by artificial intelligence and leverages healthcare-sector-wide data to identify patterns and detect early signals associated with patient safety. This enables timely preventive action and supports the delivery of safer care.

Safe care for non-communicable diseases

Marking World Patient Safety Day, which this year focuses on “Safe Care for Noncommunicable Diseases,” DoH highlighted the progress achieved during the first year of the system’s implementation.

The system now connects all hospitals in Abu Dhabi, representing 100% connectivity, as well as long-term care facilities, dialysis centres and fertility centres, with more than 60,000 users.

It enables patient safety data to be viewed from an integrated, healthcare-sector-wide perspective rather than at the level of individual facilities in isolation. This helps identify patterns, guide improvement efforts and support more proactive prevention.

The system also contributes to safer care for community members by detecting early signals that could affect their safety, supporting timely intervention and appropriate preventive measures.

Equipping healthcare professionals with comprehensive patient information

The system provides healthcare professionals with information and insights that support more informed decision-making. It also enables them to share knowledge, benefit from one another’s experience and translate that knowledge into practical measures to improve care.

It has helped reduce the time required to report risks, saving more than 2,000 hours of staff time and allowing healthcare professionals to dedicate more time to patient care.

In addition, the system plays a key role in healthcare-system-wide planning by providing an integrated view that enables the identification of common patterns across facilities, the prioritisation of areas for improvement, and the use of data to guide improvement initiatives and monitor their impact across the sector.

Sector-wide data analysis has helped guide improvement efforts across multiple areas related to patient safety, in collaboration with healthcare providers. Implementation continues to be monitored and outcomes measured, supporting the translation of data-driven insights into tangible improvements in care.

Harnessing data for proactive prevention

On World Patient Safety Day, DoH emphasised that strengthening patient safety begins with the ability to continuously learn from data and use it to support proactive prevention, rather than relying solely on responding to incidents after they occur.

The Patient Safety System embodies this approach by providing a unified, real-time view of patient safety indicators and safety culture across the healthcare sector. This helps healthcare facilities and professionals identify patterns, intervene at an early stage, and turn every report and near miss into an opportunity for learning and improvement.

The approach aligns with efforts to build a smarter healthcare system capable of predicting risks, preventing them and intervening at the right time, thereby enhancing the safety of every patient in Abu Dhabi.

During its first year, the system collected more than 70,000 patient safety-related cases, with around 70% representing opportunities to identify early warning signals and learn from potential risks before they resulted in harm to patients.

These data provide care teams with a deeper understanding of the factors and patterns that may affect patient safety, enabling them to take preventive measures and help prevent such incidents from occurring.

Results from measuring patient safety culture among healthcare professionals also showed an improvement from 68% to 73%, exceeding the international benchmark issued by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) by 21 percentage points.

This reflects progress in embedding a workplace environment that supports learning, the effective use of data and continuous improvement across healthcare facilities in the emirate.

Establishing a unified patient safety data standard

Development of the system began in 2024 with the establishment of a unified standard for patient safety data and the assessment of safety culture.

In 2025, roles and responsibilities were defined, data classification and accuracy-verification mechanisms were standardised, and the system and performance-monitoring dashboards were activated.

The development process was based first on standardising ways of working, with digital tools subsequently introduced to support these processes and ensure that data could be used consistently across the sector.

DoH continues to expand the scope of the system, with plans to bring additional healthcare facilities into the platform in the next phase, further strengthening proactive patient safety across healthcare facilities throughout the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.