Healthcare is now just a click away!

It would appear that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are ideally situated to gain from digital-healthcare technologies. McKinsey surveyed 1,400 customers in KSA and UAE in 2022 to learn more about their attitudes and experiences with digital-health services . The poll results showed that there is widespread curiosity about and familiarity with these kinds of technologies. The research suggests that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may implement digital-health technologies to better serve their patients in the areas of chronic-disease management, diagnostics, and preventative treatment. With effective leadership, the Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emiratesan digital health markets might reach $4 billion by 2026.

The healthcare sector in the UAE is poised to benefit greatly from the spread of digital innovation

Experts at the second Middle East Digital Health Forum stressed the importance of adopting a sustainable approach that fully exploits the potential of new technology in a world where sectors are continually being disrupted.

Khaleej Times hosted the event in Dubai, under the flagship of the Ministry of Health & Prevention ; Hewlett Packard Enterprise was the Gold Sponsor, and KeyReply was the Networking Sponsor.

Assistant undersecretary of Support Services at the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention Ahmad AlDashti said in his opening keynote that the event would help the country's ongoing efforts to improve healthcare quality and would give service providers a chance to talk about how they could use the latest smart digital technologies to increase the UAE's competitiveness in the healthcare industry.

Without the country's proactive vision, which fuels the flames of innovation and excellence, "we are very pleased of the UAE's transition as a worldwide gateway to the future," he said. The government has spent a lot of money over the years on digital health projects so that people can benefit from cutting-edge technologies and cutting-edge uses of existing digital infrastructure. Simply said, we aspire to make the United Arab Emirates (UAE) one of the most progressive nations in the world by establishing a first-rate healthcare system.

As pointed out by Morad Qutqut, chief customer innovation Officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), digital innovation executives are constantly considering new ideas and how they might be implemented to better serve their clients. He mentioned the difficulty of sharing medical records as a major barrier. It's been said that "the more data we have, the more visibility we'll have, and this leads to better predictions."

He also spoke highly of HPE's Digital Life Garage, an initiative that brings together government agencies, academic institutions, and tech firms to foster a more cooperative approach to advancing technology worldwide. We've helped a variety of international research projects by providing access to high-powered computers and cutting-edge tools.

The CEO of Danat Al Emarat Hospital, Dr. Mohaymen Abdelghany, recently discussed how "societal satisfaction" is now required from healthcare professionals. Part of the reason for this is the influx of tech firms into the healthcare industry. When it comes to wearables and digital health services, "Google, Amazon, and Apple are all powerful new entrants," as one analyst put it.

He went on to say that the process of changing is ongoing. "When it comes to digital transformation, organisations should follow a'step-assess-step-assess' strategy,"

Dr. Younis Kazim, CEO of the Dubai Healthcare Corporation, Dubai Health Authority, cited the Dubai Paperless Strategy as an example of a successful case study that was executed in Dubai and how it had been crucial in the digitization of patient information. "It is in accordance with the emirates' mission to provide the best quality of patient-centric care to go paperless and use health data to enhance our public health policy."

According to Dr. Haidar Saeed Al Yousuf, MD of Al-Futtaim Health, providers who adopt new technologies early on will have a competitive advantage. Technology, he argued, should not be used only for the sake of technology. We have barely scratched the surface of what can be accomplished with technology at present. For the sake of long-term patient care, we need to use a lot more cutting-edge technology.

The healthcare industry must prioritise digital solutions

According to KeyReply CEO Peiru Teo, a solid digital strategy is becoming a prerequisite for success.

"Healthcare organisations that do this will be a lot more flexible to adapt changes and have a faster return on investment on new programmes," she told Khaleej Times. "They can raise income by staying at the forefront of patients' minds and reduce expenses through greater efficiency over time."

Teo emphasised that the end users, the consumers, stand to gain the most from these developments, as they stand to receive improved quality of care and service while also having the opportunity to better control costs as a result of providers' efforts to streamline their operations and increase efficiency.

She also noted that many current inefficiencies have evolved through time and serve a useful purpose. When systems don't communicate with one another, it might lead to redundant human labour like checking and entering data by hand. These contribute to longer wait times and more frequent mistakes. Existing procedures and staff education may be to blame as well.

"Organizations can make the most of available opportunities to use novel and long-lasting forms of technology to introduce innovations entailing process redesign and to connect systems in such a way that data can flow in a closed loop within the ecosystem for optimum interoperability. The integration expenses will be greatly reduced, and the data gathered longitudinally across time will be far more informative and complete, she said.

Taking a digital-first approach to healthcare today saves time, enables the collecting of precise and historical data on patients, and will ultimately prevent diseases and lengthen human life, according to Jacques Najjar, general manager of MDS Computers, a division of Midis Group.

Human error is reduced, clinical outcomes are enhanced, care coordination is simplified, practise efficiency are increased, and data can be tracked over time, just to name a few of the many ways in which it has the potential to revolutionise healthcare. "Patients will be able to make educated choices about their health," Najjar said.

He predicted that the digital transformation of the health care industry would have far-reaching effects, including improved access, higher quality, and lower costs. It's easy for patients to get in touch with their doctor of choice.

Emerging importance of AI in Middle East Region

Future health care services will benefit greatly from the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI). It's the driving force behind developments in precision medicine, which are widely hailed as a much-needed medical innovation. Furthermore, it is crucial in imaging, diagnosis, and clinical decision-making. After artificial intelligence is introduced into the healthcare system, significant productivity benefits are anticipated. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken the lead in this area in the Middle East. Okadoc, a regional healthcare startup, has raised $10 million, one of the largest sums in the MENA region, and plans to utilise the money to establish telemedicine, allowing doctors to do virtual consultations.

As the Gulf Cooperation Council countries look to broaden their economies, the healthcare services sector will emerge as a promising opportunity. In 2017, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) unveiled its first AI plan to lessen the prevalence of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. The government has established a ministry dedicated to technology in order to coordinate the country's efforts to become the artificial intelligence (AI) capital of the world. The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) has initiated the smart home care project to ensure that patients can be monitored easily and safely without having to travel to the health facility for treatment or procedure, and that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to evaluate the data and gain deeper insights.

A new area of development in the digital health ecosystem is remote patient consultation and diagnosis. Patient records and other healthcare data are created and stored using artificial intelligence (AI), big data (DB), the internet of medical things (IoMT), blockchain, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and three-dimensional (3D) diagnostics. In this age of soaring healthcare expenses, precision diagnostics is more important than ever before since it allows for more individualised care, especially for patients undergoing long-term therapy. Thus, patients are more likely to have access to a higher quality medical care, which in turn improves their health and overall standard of living. Most diagnostic health technology companies have recently zeroed in on radiology solutions, with pioneers creating new algorithms that employ deep learning to analyse medical photographs and so effectively diagnose conditions like breast cancer and tuberculosis. The time spent waiting for a diagnosis has been cut down considerably thanks to the instantaneous transfer of medical imaging via digital health.