Dubai Health Authority (DHA) has launched the second phase of its much-anticipated Salama project, which enables access to electronic medical records for patients.

The DHA’s IT department has unified about 1.4 million records and more than 112 million transactions have passed through this system during the first phase which took place in April. Subsequently, from then on, until now, 115,181 new electronic medical records were created in the system and approximately an additional 30 million transactions have been migrated in order to support the phase two rollout.

In the centres that have adopted the Salama Electronic Medical Records System, all DHA patients’ appointments, radiology, pharmacy, laboratory information system, dental records, information about the patient on biomedical devices such as dialysis machine, ventilator, cardiac machine etc. are integrated through the electronic medical record (EMR).

In phase two, DHA centres that have adopted this project include Nad Al Sheba, Al Mankhool, Al Badaa, Al Lusaily, Al Safa and Al Zabeel PHC.

On August 18, Dubai Hospital, Nad Al Hamar, Family Gathering Clinic and Dubai Diabetes Center will adopt this system.

The third phase of the project will be completed in November, ensuring all DHA health facilities have Electronic Medical Records and that the Authority moves to a paperless system. The health facilities that will adopt this system in phase three include Latifa Hospital, Hatta Hospital, Thalassemia Center, Muhaisnah Medical Fitness Center and Dubai Gynaecology & Fertility Center.

Humaid Al Qutami, chairman and director-general of DHA, said: “This project will help provide patients across DHA health facilities with an electronic file and easy access to their health information. It will further improve patient safety and enhance efficiency. The move will benefit patients, the health facility and the overall health sector.”

Amani Al Jassmi, director of IT at the Dubai Health Authority, said: “It will help improve patient care and patient safety and it will improve risk management and organizational quality. As part of Salama program, DHA unified 425 workflows to standardize the working mechanism across all DHA facilities. The unified workflows enable improved patient care and patient safety.

‘Each roll out is supported extensively by the DHA Salama Teams by providing 24/7 on-site elbow-to-elbow support to DHA staff in addition to a dedicated round-the-clock Salama Helpdesk for its staff. In addition, approximately, 600 Salama Super Users were provided with additional training to prepare roll out. Approximately 4,000 staff members were trained during the phase 1 and an additional 3,800 were trained for phase 2 go live. By the end of this year, all DHA facilities will adopt electronic medical records.”

Al Jassmi added the project will provide healthcare providers across the DHA network with quick access to patient records. Healthcare providers will receive consolidated and integrated patient information, which gives providers a rapid, complete overview of the patient’s condition.

The system helps facilitate automatic cross-referencing of medication and allergy interactions.  The system will also provide real-time alerts, warnings, and flags to draw attention to changes in the patient medication or patient condition.  Moreover, allergy warnings will always be displayed on the screen, which directly results in minimizing any medication errors.

Al Jassmi added that patients would also be able to access to their medical record through a patient portal.

Dr Manal Taryam, CEO of Primary Healthcare Centre, said: “ Electronic Medical Records is the way forward and given the high volume of patients received at the DHA’s primary healthcare centres, the implementation of this project will significantly benefit both patients and healthcare providers and lead to improved efficiencies, which is beneficial for the overall health sector.”

Salama is integrated with more than 25 DHA internal and external applications including Dubai Corporate Ambulance Services (DCAS), Emirates ID, Bioscentia Lab, National Research Lab (NRL), DHA CRM, DHA’s Lab Information System, DHA’s radiology system, dental software and insurance system.

This ensures seamless integration and implementation across DHA facilities, which will be completed by the end of this year. – TradeArabia News Service