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Dubai: Every patient to have single, unified medical record by 2023

The milestone announcement made at the ongoing Gitex exhibition is expected to minimise the risk of medical errors

All of Dubai’s hospitals will be onboarded onto a single electronic medical file by the end of the year.

The Dubai Health Authority announced this milestone at the ongoing Gitex exhibition, which is taking place at the Dubai World Trade Centre.

For patients, this means that they 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 Riyati 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, and 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 the secure exchange of information regarding patient health 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.

By the end of this year, due to Nabidh and UAE’s Riyati project, clinicians across Dubai will be able to access over 9 million unified medical records by 37,748 Clinicians and 454 healthcare facilities across Dubai.

Awadh Seghayer Al Ketbi, Director-General of the DHA, said: "In order to serve patients better, enhance efficiencies, reduce waiting time, provide personalised patient-centered care and securely use data to develop public health policies to enhance community health and disease prevention, moving towards a digital ecosystem in the health sector is key.

The Nabidh project is one of the main initiatives that will enable us to create a digital health ecosystem for Dubai. We are proud of the collaboration with hospitals across the public and the private health sector.”

Al Ketbi highlighted that after all hospitals are onboarded, clinics will undergo the procedure next to be a part of the Emirate’s digital drive.

He highlighted that the DHA prioritises the utilisation of the latest digital technologies and cutting-edge solutions to drive progression of the sector.

Dr Marwan Al Mulla, CEO of Health Regulation Sector at the DHA, said that collaboration with the health sector is key to ensuring its growth and development; the digitisation of health services is the future, he noted.

Al Mulla added that this initiative will radically transform the manner in which patients and physicians access medical data, and will benefit both them and the overall health sector.

Private hospital groups such as Mediclinic, Aster, Saudi German Hospital, Prime Health, NMC, and Al Zahra Hospital have been onboarded onto the Nabidh initiative.

Dr Mohammad Al Redha, Director of DHA’s Health Informatics and Smart Health Department, said: “With easy access to aggregated patient records, physicians of connected facilities from different departments, such as Internal Medicine, General Practice, General Surgery, Orthopaedic Surgery and Obstetrics and Gynaecology have [all] benefited from Nabidh to make faster, well-informed decisions, reduce the duplication of tests, and ultimately improve the quality of care.”

Al Redha added that Nabidh will ensure continuity of care, convenience and the ability of patients to seek second medical opinions without the need to physically carry their medical files.

He said that the DHA will achieve 100 percent compliance for hospitals by early 2023 and onboarding of clinics will be completed by the last quarter of 2023.

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