Prescription for progress with health IT

The Life: Health information technology is changing the hospitals near us and it's just picking up here.

At Cerner, Deirdre Stewart analyses the needs of patients and hospitals, and helps to put health information systems in place at medical institutions. Razan Alzayani / The National

Armed with a spring-bound notebook and a pen - that was how Deirdre Stewart used to go to her job as a community health nurse in Al Ain back in the 1980s.

By the time she became the chief nursing officer for Cerner, a US-based health information technology company, the medical sector here had changed markedly.

For instance, during a 2008 training session for UAE nationals, where she joked about how some of them might have been babies whose hips she had checked back in the day, she spoke about managing clinical workflows in an automated environment.

Ms Stewart now analyses the needs of patients and hospitals, and helps to put health information systems in place at medical institutions.

A few weeks ago, an Abu Dhabi hospital updated its electronic health system, which among other functions connects the pharmacy at the hospital with a medicine dispensing machine in the patient ward.

Here is how it works: the pharmacy fills the machine every 24 hours, as per doctor's prescription. A drawer in the machine opens at a set time for medication, after which the nurse scans the medicine as well as the patient's wristband, and cross-checks the electronic medical record before administering the drug.

"It is called closed loop medication," said Ms Stewart.

In the Gulf, health IT has been around for about two decades, and its relatively late entry into this market is largely due to a lack of infrastructure. But this is changing fast.

Spending in the health IT sector in the UAE should grow from about US$3.1 billion (Dh11.38bn) in 2008 to nearly $4.7bn by the end of this year, according to a 2009 report from Business Monitor International. This coincides with the growth in the broader GCC healthcare sector, with governments forecast to spend close to $55bn by 2020, up from $18bn this year, says a report by Kuwait Finance Research House.

When it comes to the UAE, quality - and not price - is the deciding factor.

The UAE market "is hungry to get the latest technology from reputed companies, and this is the attraction for us", said Mehmet Bilginsoy, who is based in Ankara as the chief executive of CompuGroup Medical's Middle Eastern operations.

CompuGroup, a global firm based in Germany, has worked with King Fahad Medical City and King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital in Saudi Arabia, and is looking to enter the UAE market. Mr Bilginsoy was speaking last month on the sidelines of the Health IT Leadership Summit in Abu Dhabi, where nearly half of the attendees were government officials.

A young, technologically aware population here is also driving the demand.

They are increasingly addressing "healthcare-related needs through smartphones, tablets and other devices," said K Vinayambika, an India-based senior vice president of healthcare practice at Cognizant Technology Solutions. "We are already seeing opportunities evolving in the areas of mobile [devices], social [networks] and cloud computing."

Cognizant, based in the United States, entered the Gulf market in 2008 as a service provider to a health insurance company in the UAE.

Challenges remain, however, for companies trying to enter the UAE market. The speed of decision-making is one of the hurdles, Mr Bilginsoy said.

"And workforce here is hard to find," he added. "You have to bring [them] from Europe and Turkey to set up the business [here]."

Saudi Arabia accounts for about 65 per cent of present regional market demand, Mr Bilginsoy said.

Since 2005, Seha, or the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company, has been working to link all of its hospitals and clinics electronically. A similar effort is in progress in the Northern Emirates through the Wareed programme.

Nurses now have vital-sign monitors, such as those which measure blood pressure and pulse, sending data directly to a computer.

"For a nurse on a 12-hour shift, it cuts down up to two hours of manual data entry," Ms Stewart said.