Saudi health care plan growth to hit SR92.6bn by 2020

RIYADH: The Kingdom’s SR270 billion ($72 billion) health care plan under Vision 2030 sets Saudi Arabia on a fast-growth trajectory in the sector, projected to be a SR92.6 billion market by 2020. Partial growth will be technology and informatics driven, according to data released at the eHealth and Beyond Conference and Exhibition 2017, on Monday.

During the conference it was announced that six hospitals received the HIMSS Analytics EMRAM Stage-6 Award. They included the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz University Hospital, Riyadh; King Saud University Medical City, Riyadh; King Khalid University Hospital, Riyadh; King Abdullah Medical Complex, Jeddah; King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Riyadh and Security Forces Hospital Program, Dammam.

With two of its hospitals achieving Stage–6, Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Muammar, CEO, King Saud University Medical City, said, “The implementation of EMR System is key to achieve our national strategy; and we are proud to be part of the facilitation of a unified EMR System across KSA, which has afforded us instant access to patient records, improved standards of quality health care, better integrated workflow, minimal transcription errors, enhanced patient treatment and lower service cost.”

Reaching Stage-6 is a result of persistent focus, good direction and steadfast commitment from every hospital management that set and acted upon clear goals for improving safety, minimizing errors, and prioritizing IT implementation, which eventually qualified their hospitals to the top 25 percent of the world’s most digital hospitals.

“Technology plays an important role in health care delivery as it enhances efficiency, patient safety and resource utilization. At King Abdullah Medical Complex in Jeddah, technology is essential to the patient care process. By achieving HIMSS Analytics EMRAM Stage-6, we have proven ourselves using technology for patient care, ” said Dr. Hatim Al-Omari, CEO, King Medical Complex, Jeddah.

The stages measure a hospital’s implementation of information technology. HIMSS Analytics surveys over 8,000 hospitals to evaluate them against an Eight-Stage Scale ranging from Stage 0 to Stage-7, where Stage-7 represents an advanced patient record environment with clinical business intelligence tools that allow hospitals quality improvement.

The conference covers five key topics that are critical to the health care industry striving to accomplish the ambitions contemplated for Vision 2030 and NTP 2020, both of which aim to upgrade the quality of health care into the digital era and arm it up with analytics and informatics.

Organized by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Middle East 2030, and hosted by the Medical Services Department of the Ministry of Defense, the conference was held under the patronage of Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Abdullah