The American Hospital Dubai, one of the emirate’s leading private hospitals and the first to be accredited by the JCI, has launched an Arabic version of its website, in response to demand from Arabic speaking patients.

Arabic speakers – those patients expressing a preference to speak Arabic during their visit to the hospital - accounted for more than one third of all patients treated at the hospital in 2012, the hospital said in a statement.

The American Hospital Dubai operates a number of specialist centers, from The Orthopedic and Joints Reconstruction to Neuroscience Center to the Sleep Lab, reflecting the transformation of the Hospital into a provider of highly specialised and advanced forms of tertiary care, through teams of specialist consultants who are all US board certified or equivalent, it stated.

The hospital is increasingly developing these centers and reaching out to patients in the GCC and beyond. In 2011, the Total Joint Replacement (TJR) Center performed more than 1,000 surgeries on patients from 20 countries, and is one of the largest centers of its kind in the world.

About 40 per cent of these patients were from outside the UAE, said its CEO Thomas Murray.

"The launch of our Arabic website is a natural evolution of our patient and community communications; we know that our website is highly valued and plays an important role in communications with patients and prospective patients – helping to explain our services, introduce our physicians and provide important information on some of the most common health related issues in the region," he remarked.

"Our website is especially important for those based outside the UAE and who may rely more heavily on web based information," said Murray.

"More than seven per cent of our patients are international – from outside the UAE and from more than 20 countries - and around two thirds of these are Arabic speakers," he added.-TradeArabia News Service