CASE STUDY
Transformation of healthcare in Saudi Arabia
The Programme will focus on boosting public health and expanding the provision of e-health services .
Disaster health services Saudi Arabia identified in the past decade that health concerns with pilgrims could cause severe problems to the country ’ s infrastructure during the pilgrimage season . As part of the same strategy , contingency planning was introduced by creation of the Saudi Disaster Medical Assistance Team .
Usage of mobile applications One major service was the creation of eHealth Analytics , abbreviated to Seha . The platform allows Saudi citizens to connect with a physician via the Internet and remotely .
AI embedded in next decade The Ministry has had an increased focus on artificial intelligence . Planned partnerships with Siemens and Babylon Health will test AI operations and other advanced forms of AI in the country within the next decade .
Seha Virtual Hospital The Ministry of Health launched the first virtual hospital in the country . Specialised services in the SVH include emergency and critical advice , specialised clinics , multidisciplinary committees , medical support services , and home care services .
937 Call Centre The Ministry of Health introduced the 937 Call Centre , which uses a toll-free number to provide medical services . The call centre can process and book appointments with a medical professional , which can be done digitally with the introduction of a centralised booking system , known as Mawid .
Performance improvement The Ministry is implementing the programme of Health Performance and currently includes 99 % of hospitals , where more than 40 indicators are used to measure performance in 7 service hubs . To strengthen the role of the private sector , the Ministry of Health has introduced electronic licensing services for medical facilities . cloud , giving them the freedom to innovate and provide stellar services to patients .
Benefits
The MoH and VMware are continuing to move additional workloads on to the new environment , and more IT resources will be made available for healthcare facilities to access and use via their IT admin portals .
By having a unified cloud management system , doctors , nurses and patients will have reliable and secure access to patient records wherever they are , and all healthcare professionals , including hospital managers , will have improved access to the data they need , without worrying about potentially disruptive IT outages .
In the coming months , the MoH is planning to deploy more VMware solutions including VMware Carbon Black for additional cybersecurity , VMware Workspace ONE for secure distributed working , and VMware Tanzu to enable Kubernetes in vSphere , which will bring additional application development capabilities to the Saudi Arabia ’ s public healthcare providers .
“ All departments have gained agility , mobility , and can achieve a faster response to business requirements , which will elevate healthcare in the Kingdom ,” says Eng Khalid Almedbel , CIO Ministry of Health .
This solution also future proofs the network , by enabling the IT team to add new locations such as private clouds which can be easily integrated into the multi cloud layer , and then controlled from the same portal .
The country ’ s public healthcare system is set to benefit from resiliency , agility and efficiency created by the shared cloud platform . Each facility will save resources by having access to virtual infrastructure , storage , machines , and as-a-service applications . They will be able to design and deploy applications from the cloud , giving them the freedom to innovate .
Health clusters are able to gain access to all types of IT services from a services menu . This gives easy access to IT resources , from new email accounts to back-up services , virtual machines and security .
Health clusters and hospitals are now able to gain rapid access to all types of IT services from an intuitive service menu . This enables easy access to IT resources , from new email accounts to back-up services , virtual machines and security .
“ We look forward to working in partnership with the MoH as it continues to move workloads to the new environment and offer more cloud-enabled services to healthcare providers across the country ,” said Saif Mashat , Managing Director , Saudi Arabia , Kuwait , Bahrain , Oman and Yemen , VMware . p
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