2,700 services of Dohms now wired

DUBAI - Around 2,700 different medical services are now offered electronically by the Dubai Department of Health and Medical Services (Dohms), which has recently trained 700 of its doctors on using the new electronic systems, according to Sina Khoury, IT Director at the Dohms.

By (By a staff reporter)

Published: Tue 20 Apr 2004, 12:12 PM

Last updated: Thu 2 Apr 2015, 1:07 PM

Mr Khoury pointed to the great success and improved efficiency experienced by the Dohms upon shifting to electronic services.

He pointed to the ambitious strategy adopted by the Dohms to shift entirely to electronic services with the aim of further improving customer service and reducing bureaucratic procedures.

Mr Khoury said the Dohms completed the second phase of the Health Information Systems project, which included electronically linking the x-ray and laboratory services. He pointed out that the number of PCs at the Dohms increased by 24 per cent with the addition of 500 new machines and that e-mail users at the Dohms increased by 60 per cent.

He further pointed to the Dohms development plan for last year included 11 new IT projects, among these electronic solutions for the finance section and health section for both internal and external services. Seven of the 11 projects have been completed and four have been rescheduled.

Among the four projects that are ongoing is the Pharmacy Information System, 10 per cent of which has been completed; the Births and Deaths Electronic Registry, 30 per cent of which has been executed; the Cancer Registry, 30 per cent of which has been completed, and the Maintenance Information System, 60 per cent of which is done.

Mr Khoury said that the biggest challenge was operating the electronic medical reports system and linking it with the electronic x-ray and laboratory systems. In all 714 additional employees have been hired by the IT Department, among these 314 for the x-ray electronic services and 400 for laboratory electronic services.

The IT Department also conducted 206 training courses for 1,738 Dohms staff, administrative as well as medical staff at all Dohms hospitals and primary health care centres.

Regarding improvements to the Dohms intranet network, Mr Khoury said the Frame Relay network has been replaced with the ATM network which sends data at speeds of one megabyte per second, increasing the speed of data transmission eight fold in order to cope with the increased data flow from health care centres. He said the Dohms also introduced a system that allows authorised Dohms officials to log on to the department's internal network through the Internet.

The number of employees operating the Dohms network has also been increased by 1,505, bringing the total number of IT staff to 3,970, up from 2,395 employees at the end of 2002.