HEALTHCARE June 2020
A Gulf News Sponsored Supplement
REPORT 2020
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The response to Covid-19 in New Zealand has been applauded across the globe.
AI Will Boost Human Efforts American Hospital Dubai continues to maintain a highly respected and leading position amongst the domestic and regional medical communities. p 2
Sam Amory
General Manager – Middle East & Africa, Orion Health
History, Heritage And Healthcare King’s College Hospital London brings specialist expertise built on a renowned reputation to the UAE and wider region. p9
Smarter Healthcare With Malaffi Connecting healthcare has never been more urgent and important than now, when faced with the COVID-19. p 4
Actiste Is A Vital Digital Health Tool Data-driven telemedicine with Actiste Diabetes Management optimises patient-carer information flow. p 6
Page 10 2 AMERICAN HOSPITAL DUBAI: Artificial Intelligence Will Boost Human Efforts 4 MALAFFI: Smarter Healthcare With Malaffi 6 HSH: General Medical Supplier Hamad Saleh Alhawas Est. Single-Handedly Meets Bahrain’s Covid-19 Challenges 6 BRIGHTER: Data-centric Solutions to Managing Chronic Diseases 8 ROYAL CARE MEDICAL: Right Product, Right Approach EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Valtteri Rantalainen Producer: Rida Jillani Editor in Chief: Christian Ehrström
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PHARMA SOLUTIONS: Life-Saving Pharmaceutical Solutions KING’S COLLEGE HOSPITAL LONDON : History, Heritage, And Healthcare ORION: Using Data To Combat Covid-19 NMC Responds to the COVID-19 Crisis and Considers The Future of Private Healthcare in a Post-Covid UAE
AD / Production Manager: JENNI HYTTINEN Journalists: Tim Hydari, Kerry Luck-Torry, Gavin Parsons, Ambreen Noon, Radha Shah, Mehreen Hasan
Photographer: Rafiq Hakim Ally PRODUCED BY BUSINESS INSIGHT LTD Printed and distributed by Al Nisr Publishing
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Healthcare Report 2020
Artificial Intelligence Will Boost Human Efforts American Hospital Dubai continues to maintain a highly respected and leading position amongst the domestic and regional medical communities by always being at the forefront of innovation, expertise and patient care. When it comes to technology, and specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI), American Hospital Dubai is taking concrete steps towards building and establishing a comprehensive hospital-wide AI implementation to further enhance the experience of patients. American Hospital Dubai believes that the power of AI will be used more than ever to make healthcare more efficient, with higher accuracy, and more widely accessible to all communities and patients.
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AI continues to rapidly advance developments in several industries, including healthcare.
AI continues to rapidly advance developments in several industries, including healthcare. One of the more significant
changes AI is bringing to the fore is the overall patient experience as the quality of health outcomes remains the industry focus. Amer Salha, Director of Medical Equipment and Planning at the American Hospital Dubai comments, "The innovative use of data through AI is a promising approach for making significant progress in the areas of virtual medicine, population health management, as well as advanced clinical decision support. These developments can have significant positive influences on the individual's health journey. Developments in AI will eventually make things we already have a whole lot more useful, connecting them to smart systems so that valuable data can be stored, analysed, and ultimately put to better use. This will certainly help people to care more for their health which is our goal." The pairing of digital tools with AI analytics promises to
enhance predictive analytics to help with early detection of diseases and more accurate diagnoses, which would ultimately save more lives.
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American Hospital Dubai is taking concrete steps towards building and establishing a comprehensive hospitalwide AI implementation to further enhance the experience of patients. At Arab Health 2020, the largest annual gathering of healthcare professionals in the MENA region, American Hospital Dubai outlined steps taken to expand its technological advancements: 1. AI in Radiology: The addition of such a system optimises
radiologists' workflows, directing studies to the dedicated radiologist, setting system pre-sets, limiting diagnostic errors caused by the eye-strain, and complementing their work by providing data analysis too large for a human to process. 2. AI in Gastroenterology: The software is designed to detect colorectal polyps. It provides our physicians with a powerful new solution in the fight against colorectal cancer. It is extremely precise in identifying lesions in the colonic mucosa that can be difficult to detect. 3. AI in Early Detection of Breast Cancer: American Hospital Dubai has acquired Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) software that highlights suspected microcalcifications in the breast and along the chest walls. This software
enhances the doctor's diagnostic abilities and improves outcomes as the physician may approve or disapprove the findings as malignant.
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Using AI in spine surgery, the surgeon can upload the patient’s radiology information before surgery. 4. AI in Neurosurgery: With this technology, the software loaded on the physician's workstation enables the neurosurgeon to upload the patient's information before surgery and plan the surgical approach safely. This avoids critical anatomies in the process and yet provides the shortest and safest distance from the point of entry until the point of intervention.
Healthcare Report 2020
“I can proudly say that we offer a unique value proposition with our investments in technologies and AI innovations that cater to the needs of our patients and communities in the UAE and across the region”, says Samah Aziz, Director of Marketing at American Hospital Dubai
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American Hospital Dubai also announced the launch of the first AI research centre in the region in partnership with global health care technology company Cerner.
5. AI in Spine Surgery: Using AI in spine surgery, the surgeon can upload the patient's radiology information before surgery and navigate with 1 to 2 mm precision to the pedicle targeted for fusion with the ability to preselect the perfect screw length and width. 6. AI in Electrophysiology: American Hospital Dubai has installed Carto System from Biosense Webster to guide doctors through the complicated medical procedure intended to treat atrial fibrillation from the detection of electrical foci, which triggers atrial fibrillation, to the surgery itself.
Recently, American Hospital Dubai also announced the launch of the first AI research centre in the region in partnership with global health care technology company Cerner. The AI research centre aims to leverage Cerner’s electronic health
“The innovative use of data through AI is a promising approach for making significant progress in the areas of virtual medicine, population health management, as well as advanced clinical decision support., says Mr. Amer Salha, Director of Medical Equipment and Planning at the American Hospital Dubai
patients’ experience and saving lives. I can proudly say that we offer a unique value proposition with our investments in technologies and AI innovations that cater to the needs of our patients and communities in the UAE and across the region.
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AI is one of the fastest growing trends in marketing today, especially when it comes to improving patients’ experience and saving lives.
records (EHR) data along with its clinical AI and advanced data analytics tools to ultimately create centres of excellence for oncology, infectious diseases, and bariatric medicine. Samah Aziz, Director of Marketing at American Hospital Dubai comments, “AI is one of the fastest growing trends in marketing today, especially when it comes to improving
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We are truly getting ahead of the curve today by using AI for more comprehensive solutions, such as clinical decision support and population health management, helping us enhance customer satisfaction. AI's applications are completely reinventing patient interaction and experiences. We believe there is so much more that we will continue to achieve.” Aziz added that the tangi-
ble success of AI is increasingly driving wider adoption of newer AI technologies, especially in key areas, such as:
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Giving providers access to almost unlimited data means better treatment outcomes for patients. 1. Mining of Data: Information is the cornerstone of modern healthcare technology and digitising data is one of the essential steps in its evolution. AI solutions help us mine entire databases for pieces of information that might be relevant to a specific situation. This includes searching nationwide databases for specific symptoms or even using data to pinpoint an outbreak's epicentre as a relevant example. 2. Treatment Plans: Going further, mining data with AI technology is helping doctors provide more accurate diagnoses and design even more successful
treatment plans. Providers can search for specific symptoms that they may not have seen before and get input from thousands of doctors across every related discipline. 3. Power in the Hands of Patients: Giving providers access to almost unlimited data means better treatment outcomes for patients. However, providing the same data access to patients could help them avoid treatment altogether! As an example, by powering telemedicine devices, AI can allow patients to search trusted data sources to determine whether their symptoms even warrant a visit to the doctor. In conclusion, the power of AI will help to minimise the burden of chronic diseases, leading to the broader welfare of all citizens and residents in the UAE, the MENA region and beyond. It will play a large role in improving outcomes and enhance the experience patients have at each stage of their journey.
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Smarter Healthcare With Malaffi The Chief Executive Officer of Abu Dhabi Health Data Services, the operator of Malaffi, Atif Al Braiki, discusses the benefits of a universal Health Information Exchange (HIE) platform. Healthcare providers usually record patient medical information in a linear patient file or on their internal electronic medical record (EMR) system, available only within the same organisation; however, this kind of record-keeping does not necessarily provide a holistic view of a patient’s medical history or treatment chronology. What’s more, it is unable to present health indicators on a broader scale across a population. In the absence of this kind of centralised real-time information, it is more challenging for the government to drive and implement critical health directives.
Unified health information Created as a public-private partnership between the Department of Health - Abu Dhabi (DOH) and Injazat Data Systems, Malaffi, which means ‘my file’ in Arabic, is the region’s first Health Information Exchange platform. “The DOH has initiated Malaffi as the key component in the digital transformation of the healthcare system in Abu Dhabi, and to improve the healthcare quality and patient outcomes”, explains Atif Al Braiki, Chief Executive Officer, Abu Dhabi Health Data Services. Through Malaffi, healthcare professionals in Abu Dhabi have access to patients’ longitudinal medical files. To date, Malaffi stores more than 81 million unique clinical records and provides access to the platform to over 24,500 end-users, from more than 500 facilities. The list of connected facilities currently includes all the big healthcare groups in Abu Dhabi, like Abu Dhabi Healthcare Services Company (SEHA), Mediclinic, Mubadala Healthcare, United Eastern Medical Services, Capital Health, NMC Healthcare and
VPS Healthcare, and the majority of the stand-alone hospitals. Malaffi has recently marked a milestone by starting to connect the medical centres and clinics.
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We are aiming to connect all public and private healthcare providers in Abu Dhabi.
“With many more providers in the onboarding pipeline, through our secure and safe digital platform, we are aiming to connect all public and private healthcare providers in Abu Dhabi,” he continues. “Ultimately, clinicians will have more information about their patients, enabling them to improve the delivery of healthcare”, states Mr. Al Braiki.
Better healthcare Allowing the real-time exchange of patient data, the centralised platform streamlines the unification of the medical records. Having access to this information simplifies care coordination and transition of care between different healthcare providers. “Coordination of care is ever more critical as doctors are facing challenges due to the increasing incidence of chronic and communicable diseases, as well as the growing and ageing population,” says Mr. Al Braiki. Local trends also show that patients visit multiple doctors in different healthcare facilities, many times for the same problem. This often results in unnecessary duplication of services, varying standards of care and suboptimal patient experience leading to significant strain on the healthcare system, in addition to fuelling the rising costs of care.
Connecting healthcare has never been more urgent and important than now, when faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Al Braiki says.
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“Looking ahead, as a digital centralised data platform, Malaffi paves the way for the introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to improve further care coordination and public health management in Abu Dhabi”, Mr. Al Braiki says.
“By having access to the patients’ Malaffi file, healthcare professionals have access to data about previous patients’ visits, recorded allergies, diagnoses, chronic conditions, laboratory results, and radiology reports.
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For us at Malaffi, patient care and patient privacy go hand in hand. This is invaluable for the making of quicker, more accurate and safer clinical decisions, as well as being convenient for patients, such as the elderly, who do not always necessarily remember details from their medical history”, he elaborates.
Connected healthcare in action “Connecting healthcare has never been more urgent and impor-
tant than now, when faced with the COVID-19 pandemic”, Mr. Al Braiki notes. Patients with underlying medical conditions are at higher risk of experiencing severe symptoms from COVID-19. By having access to real-time test results and the relevant information from their medical history, front-line medical workers are empowered to make quicker and more effective first-response and treatment decisions, when a patient is in the ER for urgent care for example. To strengthen the response to the pandemic, Malaffi has allowed urgent access to its platform for providers that are not yet connected to Malaffi and need to have access to this information to treat COVID-19 patients.
Public health policies In addition to improving patient safety and overall experience,
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Connecting healthcare has never been more urgent and important than now, when faced with the COVID-19.
COVID-19 test results from all testing sites in Abu Dhabi. This enables the identification and tracing of positive cases, and real-time reporting by providing key pandemic indicators, which are crucial for the adequate response”, Mr. Al Braiki adds.
Malaffi also helps the Department of Health - Abu Dhabi by providing invaluable population health information. With these vital statistics, the government can monitor the quality of healthcare in the emirate, as well as drive important health policies. The data in the platform also helps identify public health risks and gives an effective means to measure the emirate’s emergency preparedness and response management. “As part of the COVID-19 response efforts, building on the advanced platform, Malaffi centralised the
Security With a unified HIE platform, certainly, come questions about cyber security and data integrity. With a background in digital tech, Mr. Al Braiki highlights the importance of secure data and patient privileges. “For us at Malaffi, patient care and patient privacy go hand in hand. Malaffi enables the safe and secure exchange of patient data between authorised users only. Certified and approved users from facilities, with legal contracts with Malaffi, can access a patient’s Malaffi file”, he says. “All healthcare facilities have to
abide by Malaffi’s strict privacy and security policies, and comply with the relevant Abu Dhabi laws”, he elaborates.
Future Developments Additionally, the DOH is in talks with the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention and the Dubai Health Authority to create a parallel system to centralise patient information across the entire country. Mr. Al Braiki adds that efforts are underway to launch an app to give patients access to their Malaffi file, which will empower them to better engage in managing their health. “Looking ahead, as a digital centralised data platform, Malaffi paves the way for the introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to improve further care coordination and public health management in Abu Dhabi”, Mr. Al Braiki concluded.
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General Medical Supplier Hamad Saleh Alhawas Est. Single-Handedly Meets Bahrain’s Covid-19 Challenges The Hamad Saleh Al-Hawas Est. (HSH) is a Bahrain-based healthcare supplies and food import and distribution company.
“Our goal is to find these gaps, form partnerships with suppliers, and fill this need.” explains Mr. Saleh Hamad Alhawas
Only five years old, it has already built solid relationships with the country’s Ministry of Health and defense forces providing needed essential products across the country. “Bahrain is a small country with certain gaps in the market,” explained the Managing Director, Saleh Hamad Alhawas. “Our goal is to find these gaps, form partnerships with suppliers, and fill this need.” HSH has introduced products to Bahrain from around the world including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. The healthcare division of the company is the sole distributor for numerous companies in Bahrain, stocking both medical and dental equipment and supplies. This proved to be an invaluable resource in February this year, when the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in Bahrain, overwhelming healthcare facili-
ties, as it did across the world. Turning to its global supply chain network, HSH was able to provide needed quantities of personal protective equipment, including gloves, gowns, and coveralls. HSH was the first
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HSH was the first company to provide the Bahrain government with coronavirus testing kits, and the first to import the technology to the GCC. company to provide the Bahrain government with coronavirus testing kits, and the first to import the technology to the GCC. “We were able to support
the government here mitigate the pandemic,” said Saleh Alhawas noting the first 250,000 tests conducted came from shipments the company imported. With infection rates now beginning to decrease in Bahrain, the situation is more manageable, but Saleh Alhawas recalls that until recently this was not the case. “Our team were working late, monitoring flights, discussing strategies … with the restrictions on supply chain delivery we had to turn to air cargo rather than sea to meeting the urgent quantity demands.” It was the solid relationships with international suppliers – themselves struggling to meet local demands – that enabled global cooperation and the company’s ability to deliver emergency healthcare to Bahrain.
Data-centric Solutions to Managing Chronic Diseases Daily-care solutions and data-driven telemedicine with Actiste Diabetes Management optimises patient-carer information flow Real life drives innovation. For Swedish company Brighter, founder Truls Sjöstedt was inspired to ease the flow of real-time information between patients, immediate carers and physicians. In his case, the patient was his wife, managing chronic diabetes during the birth of their first child. Actiste, a patented, cloudbased platform with remote patient assistance and data collection across specific bio markers, became the solution. Launched in January 2019 in UAE, Actiste has two European medical approval certificates. As the world's first complete IoT-health solution for remote patient assistance and treating insulin-dependent diabetes in adults, Actiste comes with a two-year subscription service for patients, including all consumables. The starter kit includes consumables and the all-in-one connected Actiste Device, which
syncs with the Actiste Companion app, downloadable on iOS and Android.
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With the pandemic, Actiste is a vital telemedicine and digital health tool, giving patients real-time physician feedback while social distancing. The app mirrors collected data and additional real-life data, like medication and personal data can also be manually inputted. Pioneers, the online diabetes community, offers peer support to users. Actiste uses eSIM technology with global out-of-the box connectivity, recording data on the Brighter network cloud with state-of-the art security stand-
ards. Patients can designate who has access to the information. The physician portal, Actiste HCP View, helps practitioners review information and optimise treatments. Amid the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, Actiste also allows for better social distancing for diabetics, a high-risk group, while digitally collecting vital health data. “Data-driven telemedicine is critical as the pandemic requires social distancing. Plus, a daily treatment routine is a challenge to manage. Also, before medical check-ups, patients better regulate their diet and doses. Actiste’s data-centric approach provides a holistic review of medical conditions and alerts carers through time-stamped updates to manage chronic diseases efficiently,” explains Brighter Director, Kristian Sandberg. Brighter continue to demonstrate the future of healthcare,
right now. “With the pandemic, Actiste is a vital telemedicine and digital health tool, giving patients real-time physician feedback while social distancing,” explains Kris-
tian. “Actiste represents a growing trend and helps patients lead better lives, while reducing costs and boosting efficiency across the healthcare system,” he adds.
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The Role of HealthTech in Improved Medical Care The region’s growing HealthTech industry brings diversified solutions and positive social impact Since 2011, Philips has shifted away from the audio-visual, TV business and lighting sectors, and become a leading HealthTech provider. “Healthcare has great potential to incorporate technology in order to provide better care and solutions for patients and providers,” believes Ozlem Fidanci, CEO, Philips, Middle East and Turkey. The entire portfolio now focuses on three groups within healthcare, including consumers, professionals, and homecare. “Our core mission of improving life through meaningful innovation is about helping people live better and healthier lives,” she says.
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Our goal is to help care providers realize the Quadruple Aim’s full potential. According to Fidanci, this approach is key as healthcare institutions are under constant strain treating chronic health conditions, such as cardiovascular issues, diabetes, and obesity, with many of these illnesses tied to unhealthy lifestyles, including poor diet, lack of sleep, and high stress levels. In her opinion, to address the problem with a lasting solution, “There is a need to increase infrastructure, but there also needs to be a focus on producing better outcomes.” To address this, Philips have set a bold target of improving the lives of 3 billion people a year by 2030. To make this vision a reality, Philips are working towards the Quadruple Aim: 1. Delivering better patient outcomes 2. Improving patient experience 3. Lowering cost of care delivery 4. Improving healthcare professional experience “Our goal is to help care providers realize the Quadruple Aim’s full potential by connecting people, data and technology to create value-based healthcare,” notes Fidanci, with “the
“There is a need to increase infrastructure, but there also needs to be a focus on producing better outcomes” says Ozlem Fidanci, CEO, Philips Middle East and Turkey.
delivery of complete solutions for products, software, integrated services, education and training, including maintenance, which leads to improved health outcomes at lower cost, with better staff and patient experience.” Fidanci considers AI-based solutions to “have great potential to improve patient outcomes and the efficiency of care delivery, but they must be based on a thorough understanding of clinical needs and developed in close collaboration with the care providers who use them.” According to Fidanci, Philips combine AI and other technologies along with knowledge of the clinical and operational context in which they are used. “We develop integrated solutions with a people-centered approach, which can be adapted to the needs of healthcare providers and embedded into their workflows to empower people to live healthier lifestyles” she adds. In image-guided therapy, Philips brings the Azurion
FlexArm to the market, which makes it easier for clinicians to conduct imaging in 2D and 3D. Due to this unique capacity, the Azurion FlexArm provides minimally invasive alternatives to open surgery. At the same time, with its compact size, it is a convenient addition to operating rooms.
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Remote patient monitoring systems and software can enable options for effectively providing virtual care.
Philips’ IQon Elite Spectral CT is the world’s first spectral detector-based CT system, replacing conventional CT scans with layered spectral images, and are in demand due to their high accuracy for disease detection.
For radiology departments, Performance Bridge is Philips’ innovative software service solution, which provides real-time data measuring the performance of different equipment, including results, analytics, and suggestions for solving inefficiencies. There is also the issue of recent social distancing requirements, which mean that patients cannot visit healthcare facilities as freely. However, “remote patient monitoring systems and software can enable options for effectively providing virtual care,” explains Fidanci. The Philips eICU solutions, for example, reduce risk of infection by upgrading bedside monitoring capabilities and remotely monitoring vital signs of patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Bedside staff at the ICU and specialised staff at the eICU center work together to manage patients with COVID-19, providing high-quality medical care from a remote location.
VitalHealth is another Philips solution. This smartphone app allows patients to record their daily status, allowing day-to-day monitoring, and acting as an excellent basis for fully-fledged medical consultation at home to avoid unnecessary visits to the hospital. Finally, Philips Healthcare Transformation Services (HTS), which is the consulting arm of Philips, offers planning services to new or temporary healthcare sites, as well as the reconfiguration of existing facilities. This expands ICU and diagnostic capacity, including developing external COVID-19 safe triage areas. With innovative, tech-enabled healthcare offerings, Philips is well-positioned to help the Middle East adopt advanced medical technologies. And with the emergence of Covid-19, Fidanci feels it will “accelerate the need to incorporate new tech in an embedded way.”
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Healthcare Report 2020
Right Product, Right Approach Royal Care Medical raises personal preventive equipment (PPE) awareness to help healthcare specialists use correct safety protocols Established 20 years ago, Royal Care Medical is a prominent player in the UAE’s healthcare industry. With long-term joint partnerships in Malaysia and India, the company is an international supplier of medical, surgical and rehab care units and devices. Within the UAE, Royal Care Medical plays a vital role at the forefront combating Covid-19 by procuring and distributing reliable, high-quality PPE equipment and devices. “You can’t mass manufacture. You have to interact with the end user to understand their requirements,” says Anubhav Gautam, Managing Director Royal Care Medical.
PPE protocols As a developer and an innovator, Managing
Director Royal Care Medical, Anubhav Gautam, has been working on PPE solutions his entire professional life, long before the current pandemic. His experiences have left him feeling that there is little awareness of how product specifications can determine doctor and patient safety. “It is not just about what you do to treat patients. It’s also about using absolutely specific equipment to ensure complete safety for all those involved to mitigate further infection,” he says.
Prioritising awareness Anubhav believes there is not enough awareness about product specification across PPE. Surgical gowns and other protective apparel are devices intended to promote infec-
tion-control practices by helping protect patients and healthcare workers. These standards are based on key-barrier tests used to classify products into defined levels of performance. Knowledge of these levels allows informed, consistent choices about the type of protective product necessary for a medical situation.
Global presence With manufacturing units in Malaysia and India, Royal Care Medical have a regional presence in the UAE, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and plan to expand soon into Kuwait and Qatar. They specialise in developing products according to market requirements. “You can’t mass manufacture. You have to interact with the end user to understand their
requirements,” he says. Their global presence allows the company to apply international AAMI (Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation) standards of quality control to product solutions. “Healthcare professionals can only perform at their best when they have complete trust on the products they are using. That is why we keep them safe and protected with the correct-use medical consumables and disposables so that they can save lives,” Anubhav concludes.
Life-Saving Pharmaceutical Solutions Critical care medicine suppliers Pharma Solutions help UAE government tackle Covid19 Founded in 2013, Pharma Solutions is a specialty licensing company that registers and distributes innovative pharmaceutical critical care medicines. Headquartered out of Dubai, the company has commercial presence in 14 countries in the Middle East, and representative offices in Egypt, Jordan and the United States. “We focus on critical care, emergency, oncology, infectious diseases, and auto-immune medicines,” says Khurshid Zaidi, founder and CEO Pharma Solutions. “The company has developed a specialty in facilitating in-licensing, commercialisation, marketing, and distribution of FDA-, EMA/EU-approved critical care pharmaceuticals,” he adds. Through his 22-year pharmaceutical career, Khurshid has closely witnessed the crippling effects of cancer on patients, as well as, on a family member. His personal experiences, along
with co-founder Maamoun Issa’s expertise, drove them to establish a company that focuses attention on emergency handling and protocols, and unmet medical needs. “We cater to the oncology-related and ICU-side of the pharmaceutical business,” says Khurshid. “Almost 85% of pharmaceutical distributors provide over-thecounter medicines, dermatology, or luxury products. Pharma Solutions is one of the few supplying lifesaving products. We want to offer real-value medicines that can help people, and meet the critical-care vacuum,” he adds.
“We focus on critical care, emergency, oncology, infectious diseases, and auto-immune medicines,” says Khurshid Zaidi, founder and CEO Pharma Solutions.
With difficult treatment protocols to diseases like cancer, HIV, Hepatitis B and C, amongst others, Pharma Solutions is invested in offering lifesaving products that can offer patients a chance. Used previously in the treatments of HIV, one of Pharma Solutions exclusive products has recently been declared a WHO and CDC-recommended drug for Covid19. “ Toci l i zu mab, Hydroxychloroqui ne, Ivermectin, Camostat, Remdesivir and Lopinavir-Ritonavir are some of the leading medicines being
recommended for treatment of Covid19. Of these, Lopinavir-Ritonavir is a product from one of our principals, which we are exclusively authorised to sell all over the Gulf region,” elaborates Khurshid. “We are currently supplying to government hospitals, Ministry of Health, Department of Health Abu Dhabi, Dubai Health Authority, Military hospitals, and private hospitals across the country,” he adds. Whilst there have been challenges across the supply chain, the company has managed inventories through good connections with suppliers around the world. “We are committed to helping the government fight this disease. Despite increased global demand for these medicines, we are still able to source them for the UAE. We have the right contacts to get things moving quickly and reliably,” Khurshid concludes.
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History, Heritage, And Healthcare King’s College Hospital London brings specialist expertise built on a renowned reputation to the UAE and wider region Since 2014, when it established its first facility in Abu Dhabi, King’s College Hospital London has been bringing expert healthcare to the UAE. In 2017, the medical group expanded to Dubai with a Jumeriah-based medical centre, a recent Marina medical centre, and a premium hospital located in the Dubai Hills estate. All facilities offer a comprehensive range of treatments and diagnostic services, and, of course, each has been instrumental in the fight against COVID-19 and building the post-pandemic healthcare landscape. Christian Schuhmacher, the newly appointed CEO for King’s College Hospital London in the UAE, weighs in on changing healthcare protocols in a post-COVID-19 world.
Digital healthcare Social restrictions saw tele-healthcare and tele-consultations surge. The King’s College Hospital London, like other healthcare organisations, established protocols that allowed patients to interact with doctors and continue treatment from the safety of their homes. It also saw the rise of conventional, old-fashioned house calls, especially in the paediatric and family medicine departments. “COVID-19 changed the way healthcare operated. It forced everyone to stay at home for safety, pushing hospitals to make doctor and nurse consultations available through other means,” says Schuhmacher. “Our aim, through the strict quarantine measures, and now, was to create a unique, patient-focused experience that provides high quality, safe healthcare.” However, even with eased restrictions, Schuhmacher feels that healthcare, especially treatment of patients with chronic ailments, will forever change. “The pandemic has accelerated the drive towards digital health, highlighting its benefits for further use. The system allows for synergies between patients, doctors and consulting specialists, while being economical and quicker in feedback,” he notes. “This can make a world of a difference to patients who need ongoing treatment. The test results and labs can be viewed
“COVID-19 changed the way healthcare operated. It forced everyone to stay at home for safety, pushing hospitals to make doctor and nurse consultations available through other means,” says Christian Schuhmacher.
remotely, diagnosis updated online, and prescriptions recommended and delivered at home,” he adds. One such example was evident during the peak of the pandemic, when the hospital moved ante-natal classes for pregnant women online. “These digital courses held out of London helped answer questions for pregnant women, whilst delivering the best healthcare protocols directly from our King’s College Hospital London’s specialty clinics,” he explains. Equally, over the June 20th weekend, King’s London organised the largest online ante-natal classes in the Middle East. “This shared core specialty of King’s London is finding greater
ease and access amongst local patients through digital platforms, making their long-term use more viable,” he adds.
Post COVID-19 protocols Whilst the hospital is back at pre-pandemic in-patient capacity, there are strict distancing and hygiene protocols in place for patient safety. “We have marked spaces for distancing to ensure that there is no overcrowding anywhere in the hospital and rooms are thoroughly cleaned between appointments,” stresses Schuhmacher. These precautions extend to antibody testing for travel clearance and treatment diagnostics, through separated, streamlined registration and testing processes. Additionally, King’s Lon-
don has also moved to adaptive schedules for consultations. “We hold ourselves to higher standards that call upon, and honour, our shared name and heritage with the King’s mothership in London. This aligns clear pathways, systems and techniques that dictate infection-control protocols,” he elaborates.
Shared knowledge Schuhmacher adds that the hospitals and medical centres in the UAE integrate best practices, honed over decades of service in London, so that clients in the Middle East can avail the best healthcare utilizing the shared information collected across the facility’s sister networks in the UK.
This symbiosis between the UAE and UK King’s College Hospital networks extends beyond COVID-19 best practices. A full third of the doctors and nurses at the UAE hospitals and centres have trained at King’s London in the UK or at its sister facilities. “In many key areas, like advanced foetal medicine, many of our nurses have trained directly at King’s College Hospital in London. This gives them firsthand training and protocols when it comes to specialised diagnostics for IVF and high-risk pregnancies,” says Schuhmacher. “This level of expertise and shared knowledge is unparalleled anywhere in the country,” he concludes.
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Today, patient information in Abu Dhabi is well on its way to being fully integrated. Sam Amory
General Manager – Middle East & Africa, Orion Health
Using Data To Combat Covid-19 Orion Health’s digital solutions are empowering healthcare organisations to respond to COVID-19 Orion Health has been leading the digital revolution of the global healthcare sector for 27 years. From its headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand, the company has branched out into 13 countries — where it has introduced health information exchanges (HIEs), remote patient monitoring systems, outbreak management solutions, among other software tools, in order to improve the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and patient outcomes of healthcare operations around the world. “The response to Covid-19 in New Zealand has been applauded across the globe. Taking an elimination approach involving a swift and strict lockdown, the country has been successful in containing the outbreak. At the
time of writing, there had been only 1,147 cases and 21 deaths recorded. Orion Health played a major role by working closely with the New Zealand National Crisis Management Centre (NCMC) by running the daily disease spread models and reporting on scenario results. The scenario results provided indicators such as predicted daily cases, ICU admissions and deaths, which ultimately enabled government and district health board decision makers to plan ahead and to evaluate expected outcomes as they progressed through the different pandemic control levels, with the country able to return to near-normality 75 days after first going under lockdown,” explains Sam Amory,
General Manager – Middle East & Africa at Orion Health.
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Company’s vision is to revolutionise global healthcare so that every individual receives the perfect care for them.
In the Gulf, Orion Health has an office in Dubai and projects in multiple regions including United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and others. While Orion Health’s product portfolio is extensive, it is informed by the company’s vision
to revolutionise global healthcare so that every individual receives the perfect care for them. This supports the shift from hospital-centric care to care delivered in the community or home setting, and empowering healthcare professionals to seamlessly offer an effective service to patients regardless of the latter’s location. The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has highlighted this need to provide care outside of the hospital setting where possible. Orion Health’s HIE forms the core of its operations. HIEs allow healthcare providers to access and share appropriate patient medical record data from multiple care settings securely and electronically in one place. Providers including acute hospitals, specialist hospitals, medical
centers, clinics, pharmacies, and even dentists can then access a holistic patient record and collaborate on their care. HIEs deliver far-reaching efficiency gains for healthcare organisations through areas such as fewer duplicated tests, improved medication safety and reduced time wasted searching for information. In the UAE, Orion Health has most prominently made its mark in Abu Dhabi, where it has supported the public-private enterprise Malaffi to unify previously separate Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems into an emirate-wide patient information platform, the Middle East’s first HIE. “Everything about a patient, whether they’re going to a clin-
Healthcare Report 2020
ic, then getting a blood test at a laboratory, and then an X-ray at a different hospital, all that information becomes available on a single screen,” explains Mr. Amory. The outdated practice of relying on patient testimonials for medical histories is thus eliminated. As of April 2020, Malaffi comprised 69 million unique clinical records of over 3 million patients, gathered using input from 509 healthcare sites. More than 1350 facilities have signed up to share data with Malaffi in the near future. It is common for an HIE to begin in one region, then maximise the learnings, investment and benefits by expanding out the successful platform to neighboring regions. For the benefit of patient care in the rest of the UAE, it would be possible to take the Malaffi HIE blueprint and roll it out to the other emirates, saving time and cost in comparison with starting new programmes from scratch. Having seen a single HIE instance work
well across regions in Scotland, Northern Ireland and New Zealand, this is something that Orion Health hopes to work on with the regional health authorities in the near future.
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HIEs are beginning to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide various types of analyses, such as predictive insights about a patient’s health.
Moving beyond the sharing of data, HIEs are beginning to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide various types of analyses, such as predictive insights about a patient’s health. By utilising the rich data in an HIE, algorithms can be built around areas such as surgical outcomes, risk of re-
admission, clinical risk assessments and more. This emerging data science is key to the global shift from reactive to predictive healthcare, and to preserving infrastructural and economic resources as healthcare systems come under growing pressure from population growth and aging populations.
also monitors other key pandemic indicators, which allows the government to keep track of the spread of the virus, gauge the effectiveness of preventive measures and improve resource distribution.
COVID-19 interventions While there has been a steady growth of healthcare innovation around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has escalated the urgency of digitised operations. “Every single one of our customers has taken this chance to use the data they have to respond to COVID-19 in the most effective way,” shared Mr. Amory. Malaffi is providing the Abu Dhabi government with real-time COVID-19 updates using an expansion of its existing HIE that collects test results from onboarded healthcare sites, as well as other testing sites in the emirate. Moreover, the HIE
Every single one of our customers has taken this chance to use the data they have to respond to COVID-19 in the most effective way.
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“Today, patient information in Abu Dhabi is well on its way to being fully integrated,” Mr. Amory adds. “Creating this data repository through the Malaffi HIE gives the government a clearer perspective about the state of public health and paves the way to better predicting outbreaks and managing diseases such as COVID-19 in the future.”
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Orion Health’s international customers have pushed for advanced technological interventions that are ripe for emulation in the UAE. In New Zealand, for instance, to support machine learning and AI Orion Health has signed on to deliver a National Algorithm Management Solution, which will facilitate planning mechanisms such as scenario modelling and risk prediction, and thus inform the New Zealand government and healthcare sector’s ongoing COVID-19 plan of action. Orion Health also launched an outbreak management system in March, which allows patients and healthcare providers to remotely monitor and communicate COVID-19 symptoms and results. This is live across customer sites in North America, Europe and South America.
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Healthcare Report 2020
NMC Remains Committed to Providing Superior Private Healthcare In a Post-Covid UAE The largest private healthcare provider in the UAE - and fourth largest in the world - with facilities across Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, NMC has been at the frontline of Covid-19 patient care in the Gulf region. The 45-year-old brand has developed and adapted its staple healthcare services to respond to the ongoing global health crisis, while ensuring its regular patient base continues to receive world class medical care. With 500 beds, NMC Royal Hospital remains a tertiary referral centre treating complex medical cases as well as general medical and surgical patients. Services include a sophisticated pediatric ICU, neonatal services, cancer program, and international collaborative research initiatives. The private hospital in Khalifa City holds a 999 contract with the Abu Dhabi Police Ambulance to receive emergency cases, including trauma patients. Centrally located between Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, the facility is extremely accessible for immediate medical care, as well as hospital transfers. These are not the only reasons NMC is a distinguished healthcare brand in the region and across the globe. It boasts an
entire network of healthcare ser- on time, answer their questions, ology, neurosurgery, ENT, ophvices, from tele-health, to home- and keep patients connected thalmology, orthopedics, and care, to long term care facilities. with their physicians - all in the pediatrics. “We’re more than hospital oper- middle of a health crisis.” ∙ In addition to stroke manators. We cover all agement, moveaspects of healthment disorders care from A to Z,” such as Parkinsays Ahmad El son’s, and demenIn order to deliver tertiary level services, NMC Solh, senior busitia, NMC specialRoyal Hospital has invested in state-of-the-art ness development, izes in epilepsy medical technology and in recruiting well trained communications, treatment – one of staff who have highly specialized and sophisticated and marketing the most common clinical skills to manage and treat patients with manager for the global neurologsevere and complex health problems. Although we NMC Royal Clusical conditions treat the sickest of the sickest, we also treat patients ter. affecting people of with general medical and surgical health issues. No Though only all ages. modestly publi∙ NMC’s multimatter the severity of the illness or injury, we always cized, NMC has disciplinary and put the patient in the center of all that we do.” provided tele holistic approach PETER MAKOWSKI health services to obstetric care SGM, NMC Royal Cluster for both pre-care ensures mothers and post-care and families are for quite some time. This apPatients with a long history of supported through every step plication proved to be a timely illness would normally have to of pre and postnatal care, from in-built solution for maintain- visit the hospital frequently. labor preparation, conventional, ing non-Covid patient care Alongside its emergency re- caesarian, and emergency delivthroughout the pandemic. El sponse services, NMC Royal eries, and yoga and breastfeeding Solh explains how it worked: Hospital provides superior care classes. “We were able to get chronical- for a number of services, such ∙ NMC’s cardiac unit, comly ill patients their medication as neurology, gynecology, cardi- prising interventional cardio-
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logists, thoracic surgeons, and anaesthesiologists, ensures superior heart care. There are individual clinics for every aspect of preventative, emergency, surgical, and post-operative care, from chest pain and arrhythmia, to surgery, to specialized women’s care. ∙ The one stop breast clinic is a state-of-the-art facility where patients are examined and appropriate investigations are ordered. All investigations are done and immediately reported on the same day. The surgeon discusses the results with the patient, and if a biopsy is indicated, it is performed unless counter indicated.
NMC Royal Hospital provides safe, world class medical treatment and is dedicated to the health and wellbeing of people in the region. For those that would like to get in touch with NMC can do so at 8001122.