Dubai:
Unified electronic medical records, an international disease coding system are some of the highlights of smart health care systems unveiled by the Dubai Health Authority (DHA).
This was part of a smart clinic organised on the sidelines of a e-health conference during the Health Information and Management System Society (HIMSS) week.
Dr Mohammad Al Redha, director of health data and information analysis department at the DHA, said: “As planned, all health care entities are moving towards the implementation of the National Unified Medical Records (NUMR) project which is led by the Ministry of Health in the UAE. This is undoubtedly the way forward and will benefit both patients and the overall health sector in numerous ways. This is in line with the Dubai Smart City Initiative and the ultimate goal is to achieve patient happiness, in this case technology is the enabler to achieve this goal.”
Al Redha observed that in the last four to five years, the DHA has seen an increase in the number of hospitals in Dubai that are on track with their automation plans towards a paperless environment and that there has been a big leap in the number of hospitals that have achieved digitisation since the project of benchmarking electronic efficiencies was introduced in 2011.
“The movement has gained momentum and once the national medical records project is implemented, it will unify all medical records of patients in the UAE, provide up-to-date medical records, eliminate duplication and reduce registration times besides helping minimise medication errors and reduce length of hospital stays.”
Dr Saif Aljaibeji, regional general manager United Health Group, said that providing a seamless flow of patient information across entities will not only benefit patient management, provide continuity of care and improve patient outcomes but also will help in devising evidence-based health strategies especially for management of chronic diseases, it will reduce unnecessary costs that can be reinvested into implementing latest technology etc.
Dr Ayesha Habeeb Al Mutawa, director of strategy and corporate excellence department at the Ministry of Health said, “UAE is keen to implement technology to benefit patients and at the same time we want to focus on innovation and having the strategic foresight to ensure innovation is a part of our health strategy so that we can find the most lucrative solutions to pressing health problems and technology is one of the enablers to achieve this.”
In 2011 Dubai implemented the latest coding for disease classification making it the first in the world to implement the latest ICD-10-CM code. Al Redha said: “The code is a disease classification code published by the United States for classifying diagnosis and reason for visits in all health care settings. For example, two doctors who have studied in two different countries may have a different name for an appendix inflammation, but if they type the name using this system, there is one code to classify that disease. This means we all speak the same language using the help of codes. This helps insurance companies process claims and also provides accurate health data.”
Al Redha added, “While other countries in the world have the earlier version of this coding system, since Dubai was newly implementing this, we decided to implement the very latest model and we have to be agile enough to continue to be the pioneers in implementing the updates as and when they are introduced.”
