DUBAI, 25th January, 2023 (WAM) — Dubai Health Authority (DHA) recently held a workshop with relevant stakeholders to discuss the progress of the NABIDH initiative and ways to enhance integration with the health sector in the emirate.
NABIDH is an ongoing digital transformation project that will ensure one electronic medical file for every patient.
Presently, NABIDH has unified to over 7 million medical records and more than 31,000 clinicians and 382 healthcare facilities are part of the initiative. More than 43 medical record systems are also part of the initiative.
Awadh Seghayer Al Ketbi, Director-General of DHA, highlighted the progress made by this initiative and emphasised that DHA focuses on utilising the latest healthcare technologies to ensure the provision of the highest quality of medical services.
Al Ketbi highlighted that adopting the latest technology is in line with the emirate’s strategy of providing the highest quality of services to community members.
He added that moving towards a digital ecosystem in the health sector is vital to help serve patients better, enhance efficiencies, reduce clinical waste, provide personalised patient-centred care and securely use data to develop public health policies to enhance community health.
“NABIDH project is one of the main initiatives that will enable us to create a digital health ecosystem for Dubai. Continued collaboration with hospitals across the public and the private health sector is a key component for creating a robust health sector in the emirate,” Al Ketbi noted.
NABIDH has several benefits for all stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem. For patients, it means that their healthcare provider will have one electronic medical file with all their medical reports safety stored and that when the patient moves from one facility to another, the medical file will follow.
The project is linked to UAE’s Riayati initiative, ensuring that in future every person in the UAE has one electronic medical file.
The initiative enhances efficiency, minimises the risk of medical errors, empowers patients and healthcare providers. The digital transformation initiative aims to revolutionise healthcare delivery in Dubai through a digital platform, which enables central storage and secure exchange of patient health information between healthcare professionals.
Additionally, NABIDH will also provide evidence-based gold standard data for public health and wellbeing initiatives to enhance population health and disease prevention.
Dr. Mohammad Al Redha, Director of DHA’s Health Informatics and Smart Health Department, commented, “With easy access to aggregated patient records, physicians of NABIDH connected facilities are already seeing the benefit of this system. NABIDH helps make faster, well-informed decisions, reduces the duplication of tests, and ultimately improve quality of care.”
Al Redha added that NABIDH will ensure continuity of care, convenience and patients can seek second medical opinions without the need to physically carry their medical files.
He added that DHA aims to achieve 100 percent compliance for hospitals and that the next stage will include onboarding of clinics.
