UAE healthcare sector ups IT spend

Taher Shams, managing director, Zulekha Healthcare Group

The UAE healthcare sector is witnessing a rise in its IT spend as hospitals face huge pressure to strike a balance between offering real time services to customers and keeping up with the latest trends.
"Yes the role of technology is growing in healthcare and is inevitable. We were well aware right from the onset of the benefits of IT solutions in healthcare. We have planned and invested extensively to ensure we create complete ease of information access to our professionals at work and improve efficiency. Maintaining digital patient records over 12 years demonstrates our readiness to meet any advance requirements to connect patient databases to government mandated systems in future in the region and beyond borders," said Taher Shams, managing director, Zulekha Healthcare Group.
The GCC region is witnessing a wave of IT enabled applications in delivering effective healthcare. The tech-savvy generation has encouraged the use of innovative technology such as e-visits, digitisation of electronic medical records (EMR), data analytics, and mobile applications for patient engagement.
The regional governments are investing in such technologies to modernise and streamline their healthcare systems to reduce costs and improve quality of care Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar have framed e-health strategies, involving the automation of medical centers, monitoring of patients remotely, and data management, among others. The UAE has launched an electronic healthcare information system 'Wareed' linking 14 MoH hospitals and 25 state clinics in 2014 to avoid the duplication of patient records and increase patient safety, according to Alpen Capital's research.
Further Shams, said: " Our financial commitment to the IT advancements is planned and since it is the lifeblood of our operations we embrace the increase in IT investments over the years. Zulekha Healthcare Group ranks among top three in technology with International Certifications ISO 20000 and ISO 27001 in healthcare and has deployed a series of hardware and software solutions that resulted in enabled communications and contact center environment.
"As a healthcare provider, it is also imperative to ensure that required patient data is always available as and when required and real-time communication should be established as patient life is at stack. We welcome any further improvements and would be keen on investing on beneficial IT solutions."
Echoing similar sentiments Mukta Arora, Group CIO, Aster DM Healthcare, said: "IT is very important to run any healthcare operations, the sector is really catching up fast compare to others like retail and other industries which are digital in nature. So we are seeing the sector moving towards digital healthcare. For Aster IT spend has moved up considerably as it sees it as a very intrinsic to deliver healthcare services to patients." Arora spoke at the launch of Aster DM Healthcare's advanced personalised technology to enable patients to improve Diabetes and Hypertension control from home - Aster Chronic Care @ Home.
The advanced technology is an integrated health service, combining the concept of constant connectivity, advanced smart-device technology, remote chronic care management from home and continuum of care from the best specialists in UAE. Aster DM Healthcare is a healthcare network with over 280 operating facilities across nine countries, including 13 hospital, 87 clinics and 180 retail pharmacies.
- sandhya@khaleejtimes.com