Importance Of E-health Application At The Point Of Care

Main Category: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 20 Oct 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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As the Ministry of Health announced last week, with the implementation of Wareed, the new health information system, hospitals and clinics in the UAE will be connected via an online network by 2011 to improve medical care and ensure patient safety.

This network aims to exchange and access to medical and health information between patients and doctors as well as healthcare peers across the country. Patients can now be treated in the most effective way by having access to their treatment results, updates and follow ups. They can also easily be transferred from one hospital to another within the UAE, even outside of the country thanks to specific agreements between the hospitals. The new system promises to avoid losing data, saving time and money, decreasing the waiting time for medical appointments but most importantly has the ability to provide international medical second opinion. Although Wareed has a lot of advantages, it has some drawbacks. The main concerns are how to run the system in most efficient way and ensure patient safety while going through the process of implementing the customer centric data system.

At the 3rd annual Healthcare Expansion Congress Mid-East, organized by naseba, e-health application in the region, the importance of information at the point of care, patient safety and cancer management were the hottest issues discussed during the event. The leading solution providers as well as decision makers from the healthcare industry around the globe gathered together to share their experience and find the best solutions to their needs.

Effectiveness in implementation

"The most effective method of implementing e-Health services for the population of the UAE requires serious consideration to the actual requirements and objectives of the program. Certainly in today's world there exists the technical capability to deliver both clinical and non-clinical application suites to meet and exceed the service level requirements that may be placed upon them, "said Raj Singh, healthcare solutions consultant EMEA, Hitachi Data Systems.

The key considerations for such capability should also take into account the medical and clinical practices being adopted, with stated objectives for improved care, workflow processes and the delivery of the best medical care possible. These "healthcare business-level" objectives can then be translated to technology solution requirements designed and implemented to meet them.

How to ensure patient safety?

"Patient safety is and should continue to be the most important consideration for delivering patient care while implementing the new system. A certain element of risk from human errors always remains but we should certainly be able to address avoidable and often costly mistakes," noted Raj Singh.

"The reliability of IT health information systems coupled with advances in technologies such as RFID and Finger Vein Biometrics can help improve patient safety quite significantly. The most important consideration for improving patient safety still relies, however, on the healthcare providers who need to ensure they build out the best care practices with correct patient identification throughout their healthcare workflows and processes." he added.

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a role model

On the second day of the 3rd Annual Healthcare Expansion Congress Mid-East, Dr. Fahad Bin Saleh Al Orifi, the MD Chief Executive Officer of King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center- Riyadh, shared the experience of e-health application in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the first country in the Middle East region, to have implemented the eICU program, patented by VISICU, which combines early warning software and remote monitoring to connect off-site critical care physicians and nurses to ICU patients at all times.

The eICU Program provides an alternative way to deliver high-quality critical care when specialist resources are limited. The eICU vision is to have centralized intensivist physicians & critical care nurses - round-the-clock in an eICU Center - to help bedside teams watch over their sickest patients and to prioritize and guide interventions. The evidence is growing that eICU Programs are having a proven impact on saving lives, reducing complications as well as the length of patient stays, especially in the countries where people have limited and unequal resources in healthcare services.

"Implementation of e-health services enables the equal distribution to high tertiary care to all citizens of Saudi Arabia, easy accessibility to healthcare services and education through e-health networks, cost effectiveness and efficiency for delivery healthcare by utilizing high sophisticated e-health technology and information, availability of healthcare services within 24h/7 and transmission of all kind of medical and administrative events to as many as participants and attendance could be," noted Dr. Fahad Bin Saleh Al Orifi.

His message for UAE health authorities was: "Sharing the regional experience could avoid a lot of hiccups, while running the system and building the right infrastructure for the e-health application. Investing in broad bandwidth will let such applications requiring heavy data exchange possible," he added.

The Government's point of view

Mohammed Abd Al Abi, the head of Radiology from the Ministry of Health mentioned that the system of e-health facilitate will enable both patients and doctors across the country to make quick and well-informed decisions as well as ensuring the quality of treatment. At this point, training the staff on the new implementations, upgrading and maintaining the data base are vital factors for the sustainable safety of patients.

The 3rd Annual Healthcare Expansion Congress Middle East is the only event in the industry that is designed to provide deep insights into the most relevant issues affecting the medical community today. In addition it provides the opportunity for healthcare professionals to source the newest solutions for their current and upcoming projects while meeting leading global solution providers.

The 3rd Annual Healthcare Expansion Congress Middle East has become the leading upper level executive congress in the Middle East Healthcare industry. Following the success of its healthcare series, naseba has decided to expand the healthcare series in the Middle East as well as in Europe.

http://www.healthcareexpansion.com

News Source
Idil Akinci
NASEBA
http://www.naseba.com