Dubai: Health professionals registered in Dubai will not have to reappear for licensing exams after they leave the country and should choose to return, officials said on Sunday.
A new Dubai Health Care Professionals’ registry unveiled on Sunday will keep their licensing records even if they leave the country, and their status can be reactivated if they wish to return, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) said.
The registry, going live by the end of 2018, was unveiled at the 13th conference of the International Association of Medical Regulation Authority (IAMRA) in association with the third Dubai Health Regulation Conference (DHRC).
Dr Marwan Al Mulla, CEO of Dubai Health Authority’s Health Regulation Sector, told Gulf News: “Health professionals, be it doctors, nurses of technicians earlier lost their certification once they left the emirate. However, under the Dubai Health Care Professional’s registry, their status will remain inactive once they leave but they will not require to reappear for examinations if they decide to return.
Once registered, they can reactivate their registration, provided they continue practising their profession and have no medico legal cases. This will not only save cost and time for the professionals but also streamline the smooth reactivation of their practising status once they return.”
Around 38,000 health care professionals are working in 3,100 facilities in Dubai. Nearly 90 per cent of the facilities have already acquired international accreditation, added Dr Mulla.
Linda Abdullah, head of Dubai medical tourism office, said the Dubai registry fell within DHA’s online licensing system Sheryan that would officially come into effect early 2019 along with Qeyas, the electronic rating system for health care facilities.
“We continue to build on our health care facilities and our progress is ongoing. The health care professionals and their specialities required are being projected according to DHA’s service capacity plan which identifies the gaps in the sector and it will help guide us into inducting those professionals. In the next two days, the DHA will also present its investment guideline for health care. Everything is linked and we continue to build and improve.”
Highlighting the importance of digital technology in the field of health care, Dr Humayun Chaudhry, chair and secretary for IAMRA, told Gufl News: “While technology such as cloud computing, telemedicine, and Artificial Intelligence plays an important part in the advancement of modern medicine, we have to be sufficiently wary as it can cause harm in terms of violation of ethics, privacy and patient confidentiality. It is important to use technology as ‘Augmented intelligence’ to assist in furthering the cause of modern medicine and assuring efficient health care delivery systems globally.”
Dr Kevin Fong, consultant from the University College of London Hospital, in his key note speech took this discussion of technology being a two-edged sword a little further. He said: “Modern medicine is built on the foundation of technology, science and engineering and this is an unprecedented age of sophistication where medicine cannot lag behind in technological advances. But that is the challenge for regulators to implement these changes as medicine is a high risk field. Regulation is important in medicine because of people’s health is at stake.”
Humaid Al Qutami, the director general of DHA, in his inaugural address pointed out that the health sector is a pivotal element and top priority in the development process of the UAE.
How the new registry will work
Doctors, nurses and other health care professionals seeking to work in Dubai will give their mandatory entrance and certification exams and get themselves registered with the health care professional’s registry.
If they decide to leave Dubai for some reason, their registration will continue to remain valid but with an ‘inactive’ status.
The registry will continue to update the individual’s professional experience, continued medical education and further academic status.
It will also record medico legal cases or adverse experience.
If the professional decides to return, he or she can reactivate their status provided they have not stopped practising and have no negative cases registered against them in another country
The registry will use technology to compute and update all data about the professional and reactivate their status so that the individual does not require to reappear for any fresh pre-qualifying examination, provided the individual has no adverse experience logged into his registry details.
