Entrepreneur logs into healthcare administration market

Data digitisation has become big business for one IT specialist.

Abu Dhabi's efforts to digitise its healthcare facilities have opened up a new market for entrepreneurs such as Roman Konovalov. Mr Konovalov is the founder and managing director of Greenrain. The company, established in 2006, created software for pharmacies to help prevent prescriptions being written for individual patients for medicines that, if taken together, could cause harm or even death.

At the time, there was not a drug database existing that pharmacists could use to cross-reference the drugs. So, Greenrain approached the Ministry of Health to get a list of drugs available in the UAE and created software that would allow pharmacists to double-check the prescriptions they were making. "Many drugs are not allowed to be taken during pregnancy or breastfeeding," Mr Konovalov says. "The software can check if there is no overdose, or if there is no conflicts between prescribed drugs and diagnoses."

He says about 6 per cent of the 500,000 prescriptions checked so far have been flagged for incompatible drugs that if taken together could kill patients. In less than four years, Greenrain has sold 117 licences in pharmacies in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain. A year's subscription is Dh499 (US$135.85) per computer. A former project manager at Siemen's Medical Solutions, Mr Konovalov began writing the software in January 2006 and unveiled it later that year.

Two years later, the Abu Dhabi Health Authority signed up as a client and now uses Greenrain's "e-claims" software for drugs reimbursement, he said. @Email:[e-mail]