As global healthcare systems work toward implementing enhanced patient care programs, technology is an essential propeller for their journey. Healthcare systems quickly embrace new tools and advancements to suit their needs. Many technologies have been adopted and utilized in healthcare systems for decades and are now integral to their overall architectures. The electronic health record (EHR) is one platform that’s been deeply embedded within many healthcare workflows and helps enable many previously unthinkable exchanges between patients, clinicians, and systems.

Emirates Health Services and federal entities integration:

Emirates Health Services (EHS), UAE uses its Oracle Health EHR, “Wareed,” as a focal platform to ensure a seamless, standardized, patient-centered, and outcomes-focused service. EHS serves a vast population across six emirates of the UAE, providing all tiers of care. There’s often a requirement for instant patient information exchange between various EHS providers, departments, and facilities, which is conducted smoothly through Wareed.

It was observed that many joint programs between EHS and other federal entities exchanged patient information through manual processes. These programs covered a wide range of screening services for identifying at-risk patients, patient eligibility for enrollment or employment, and immediate response services for crisis management. Many such transactions were conducted daily, and a manual delay or slight human error could impact the entire process. Additionally, the reports were shared on paper, which didn’t align with the paperless vision of the UAE.

Wareed has interoperability and standardized connectivity capabilities for exchanging healthcare data bi-directionally in a safe and secure environment. In pursuit of a paperless environment in which the manual processes are minimized, the federal entities integration initiative was implemented. Under this initiative, many projects have sought to maximize efficiencies by leveraging Wareed’s ability to integrate information flow between disparate systems.

Projects implemented under this initiative include emergency and crisis management integration, sick leave integration, pre-employment, premarital, pre-university, and national systems integration—such as the Riayati and Sphere programs—to meet the needs of various government entities such as the Federal Authority for Government Human Resources (FAHR), the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Interior, National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority (NCEMA), and the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs & Port Security (ICP). Some programs have direct patient interaction while others focus on critical decision-making. Historically, these services were reliant on manual processes that were often time-consuming.

Seamlessly integrated workflows

Emergency and crisis management integration is a critical project in which information about EHS bed and blood products availability is shared with the national crisis and emergency authority. Through integration with Wareed, this information is automatically updated in a shared portal in near real-time, which can be lifesaving in many situations. Before the implementation of this project, this information was updated every 12 hours and had manual reporting dependencies.

EHS provides a range of screening services for various federal entities. The screening visits involved significant information gathering on papers and more than one visit to a physician to complete the process and receive a fitness certificate. Each visit was tied to at least one paper to print the fitness certificate. To streamline this process, Wareed has enabled flow of information between all entities involved. Additionally, extensive automation has reduced the number of steps requiring additional patient visits and the collection of documents. Similar automation was achieved for sick leave workflows, in which patients’ unique identities are used to update their sick leave creation and approval between EHS and other federal entities.

Integrating with national systems, Wareed data is exchanged seamlessly with the Riayati platform to achieve the “one patient, one record” dream. This centralization of medical records and delivery of an innovative, fully integrated, and digitized clinical information system helps contribute to improved healthcare outcomes. Wareed is also integrated with the epidemiological surveillance platform Sphere, which enables prompt disease surveillance and response for communicable diseases in the EHS population.

Benefits of EHS and Federal entities integration Initiative:

Over the past couple of years, extensive efforts have been invested in enabling this dream. The integration of healthcare data exchange between EHS and several federal entities has several benefits, including:

• Seamless workflows: Integrating the EHR with other entities has improved care coordination to help ensure a smooth patient journey from the time of the appointment request until the certificate has been received.
• Physician workflows: Physicians benefit from documentation tools and order sets designed specifically for screening workflows. Healthcare data exchange has also introduced standardization in screening practices for the included programs.
• Data accuracy: Because information flows directly from the patient record to federal entities through the integration between Wareed and the portal, the chance of manual errors is minimized.
• Timely decision-making: Real-time data exchange for bed and blood product integration enables more timely decision-making for the NCEMA
• Reduced turnaround times: Enabling an electronic process through a safe and secure portal, patient certificates are released in real-time rather than after several days.
• Enhanced patient experience: An automated workflow brings an improved experience to patients, beginning with the automatic flow of appointment requests and concluding with the final release of the patient’s certificate on the portal.
• Paperless solution: Through the integration of electronic certificates through Wareed, paper has been eliminated from these workflows, which reduces the burden on the environment through a sustainable solution.

In conclusion, integrating healthcare systems with other government organizations has led to a more holistic approach to healthcare provision. This initiative has achieved many efficiencies and has the potential to accommodate other services addressing health and environmental factors effectively.