AI will help Dubai deal with med emergencies

Dubai will soon get an Emergency and Crisis Management Nerve Centre that will use artificial intelligence to save lives. The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) recently signed an agreement with Avanza Solutions to implement the citywide system.
As part of the agreement, Avanza's smart city medical management platform 'Acuity' will give the DHA perspective of what is happening across the city.
The system uses artificial intelligence and can carry out several complex commands that will be activated once the patient is in the ambulance. This includes looking at the closest hospital which has a bed available, hospital activation, a hospital bed being reserved for the patient and even the appropriate medical team being readied for imminent arrival of the patient.
The system can also help activate clinical teams. A heart attack victim would not waste time in the emergency department and instead be whisked seamlessly into the cardiac suite.
"The system will be invaluable for Expo 2020 when the population of Dubai will burgeon from 3 million to 25 million over a 6-month period. For clinical emergencies, such as a heart attack, stroke or road traffic accident, seconds can be the difference between life and death. This is where the system will optimise its true potential to take timely evidence-based decisions," said the DHA in a Press statement.
Humaid Al Qatami, Chairman of the Board and Director General of the DHA, said: "We are confident that Avanza's technology and platform in conjunction with their team of medical experts will deliver a highly advanced medical nerve centre for Dubai. This will ultimately result in faster and highly efficient handling of emergency and trauma patients, thereby saving many more lives."
To make Acuity smarter, it will store data and use it to design better algorithms based on concepts of machine learning. Additionally, Acuity allows the DHA and hospital-based healthcare professionals to be able to view data pertaining to specific patients, as the data is being entered by the ambulance crew. "Vital observations are shared on the Acuity platform so that any number of doctors can discuss the case, with chat being possible within Acuity in real-time," said the DHA.
The ultimate aim for Acuity is to match supply of critical medical facilities and equipment with real-time demand of emergency cases.
Khalfan Belhoul, CEO of Dubai Future Accelerators (DFA), said: "We wish Avanza and the DHA best of luck in the execution of the pilot project and we hope their solution, Acuity, will showcase Dubai as a model city in the field of emergency medical case management."
reporters@khaleejtimes.com