Dubai health facilities will be paperless in seven months

Dubai - This facility is possible as the first phase of DHA's Salama project went live earlier this month

The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) has made medical records available electronically for patients in some of its health facilities.
The system will also be used as a cross-reference for medication and allergy interactions. It will provide real-time alerts, warnings and flags to draw attention to changes in the patient medication or patient condition.
The new system eliminates the need for manual files and ensures that if patients visit multiple DHA health facilities they still have only one unified medical record.
This facility is possible as the first phase of DHA's Salama project went live earlier this month.
In the first phase, Rashid Hospital and five other DHA health centres will provide electronic integration, the second phase will take place in August and the third and final phase of this project will be completed in November 2017 ensuring all DHA health facilities have EMRs and that the authority moves to a paperless system.
Humaid Al Qatami, chairman of the board and director general of the DHA said: "Our smart initiatives are aligned with the Dubai Health Strategy 2016 to 2021 and the Dubai smart government strategy, which aims to transform Dubai into a smart city."
"This project will help provide patients across DHA health facilities with an electronic file and easy access to their health information. The move has numerous benefits: to the patient, the health facility and the overall health sector."
The DHA's IT department has unified about 1.4 million records and more than 12 million transactions have passed through this system.
Now all DHA patient's appointments, radiology, pharmacy, laboratory information system, dental records, information about the patient on biomedical devices such as dialysis machine, ventilator, cardiac machine etc. will all be integrated through the electronic medical record (EMR).
In order to ensure its smooth facilitation, the authority has asked patients who visit DHA facilities to provide their Emirates ID, medical cards and health insurance details for electronic registration.
Amani Al Jassmi, director of Information Technology at the DHA said: "It will help improve patient care and patient safety and it will improve risk management and organisational quality."
"The project will provide healthcare providers across the DHA network with quick access to patient records. Healthcare providers will receive consolidated and integrated patient information, which gives providers a rapid, complete overview of the patient's condition," she said.
"The system helps facilitate automatic cross-referencing of medication and allergy interactions. The system will also provide real-time alerts, warnings, and flags to draw attention to changes in the patient medication or patient condition. Moreover allergy warnings will always be displayed on the screen which directly results in minimising any medication errors."
Al Jassmi added that patients would also be able to access to their medical record through a patient portal.
In addition to the Salama project, the DHA is simultaneously working on the NABIDH (pulse) project, which is a Dubai-wide project to standardise and enable exchanging patient data across all health information systems deployed throughout Dubai.
asmaalizain@khaleejtimes.com
 
Benefits of EMR system
The new EMR system will offer the following benefits
> Improved patient care: Quick access to patient records from inpatient and remote locations leading to higher degree of care coordination. The system will provide improved and automatic decision support for conducting clinical investigations and medications.
> Improved patient safety: The system allows automatic cross-referencing of medication and allergy interactions. It provides positive identification for medication administration, real-time alerts, warnings, and flags to draw attention to changes in the chart or patient condition that are implemented to be evidence based. This will ensure significant decreases in near-miss medication events.
> Real-time quality monitoring: Consolidation and integration of patient information allows for rapid access to all patient details. Salama system is integrated with medical devices such as anesthesia, ventilators, cardiac monitors, and dialysis machines of high acuity areas. Salama is also integrated with Cardio Vascular Imaging System (CVIS) that allows in tracking history of all cardio information of patients.
> Improved risk management: Risks will be mitigated through automatic and immediate clinical alerts. The system is designed to adhere to evidence-based, best-practice clinical pathways and will help prevent adverse events.
> Improved organisational quality: In-depth reports identify short and long-term adherence to quality standards. Decision support is customised to target operational and strategic organisational goals. Organisational changes can be data and evidence driven. It will also include standardisation of policies, clinical practice guidelines and pathways.
Salama is integrated with more than 25 DHA internal and external applications including Dubai Corporate Ambulance Services (DCAS), Emirates ID, Bioscentia Lab, National Research Lab (NRL), DHA CRM, DHA's Lab Information System, DHA's radiology system, dental software and insurance system.
 
Salama implementation in three phases
Phase 1 > April 7 at 3am in Rashid Hospital, Al Barsha Centre, DPRC, Al Safa Dermatology and Airport Medical centres (Dubai and Maktoum).
Phase 2 > August 2017 in Dubai Hospital and all other Primary Healthcare Centres
Phase 3 > : November 2017 in Latifa Hospital, Dubai Hospital, Medical fitness centres and other speciality centres

• Dubai