From April this year, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) will go live with Salama, its comprehensive electronic medical records (EMR) system, which will be implemented in three phases until the end of this year, said a top official.

This would mean that every patient will have an integrated electronic medical file that will be accessible in all DHA hospitals and health centres he or she is referred to.

Amani Al Jasmi, director of Information Technology at DHA, told Gulf News: “Salama marks the transformation of our medical services as it re-engineers the entire process unifying 25 applications through a single interface. The records system will bring together information about radiology, laboratory, dental, dietetics and so on under one single system. It will generate one big database on patients, hospitals, illnesses, incidence of infections, and we will then use this through different dashboards. So a physician will refer to a dashboard relevant to him and the director general will have a comprehensive dashboard giving him a complete look at the emirate’s state of health care.”

Over 11,000 DHA staff will receive training as the system is implemented. In the first phase, the EMR will be implemented in April at Rashid Hospital, Dermatology Centre, Airport Medical Centre, Dubai Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Centre, and Al Barsha Primary Health Centre.

In the second phase, that will begin in August 2017, the system will be implemented at Dubai Hospital, Dubai Diabetes Centre and all primary health centres.

In the third phase, the implementation will conclude with Latifa Hospital, Hatta Hospital, Thalassaemia Centre, Dubai Gynaecology and Fertility Centre and all DHA medical fitness centres.

Al Jasmi added that once the system in implemented, it will arm the health care sector with complete information required to take the progress forward. “We will know about infection breakout, get data on non-communicable diseases, get a complete breakdown gender-wise of the state of health of residents, the success of treatment at respective hospitals and their rate of readmission etc. This kind of big data will help greatly in designing our health strategy for the future.”