Daman links cards with Emirates ID
THE COMPANY WILL STOP PRINTING CARDS FROM NOVEMBER 2018
If you forget your health card at home, don’t worry. Your Emirates identity card will be accepted at health care facilities in the country as Daman National Health Insurance Company has linked insurance cards with the Emirates ID.
The company will stop printing health insurance cards from November next year, a senior official of Daman told Gulf News yesterday.
The country has gradually been moving towards digitalising all government and private sectors services and using one card for all purposes and linking a number of services to the Emirates ID such as health, driving licence and banking.
More than 200,000 transactions were done in a month through Emirates IDs for health-related purposes.
The service began officially from November 1. By November next year Daman will stop printing health cards.
30,000 benefitted
Speaking to Gulf News on the sidelines of the Digital Transformation Summit in Abu Dhabi yesterday, Hamad Abdullah Al Mehyas, chief process officer at Daman, said, “Since November 1 we have already started linking our health services to our customers’ Emirates ID, so now there is no need to carry health cards to hospitals and pharmacies.”
This month 30,000 Daman customers will benefit from this new initiative, he said.
“We will stop printing health cards gradually depending upon the expiry of the cards.
“When a card expires we will not issue a new card. Instead, we would link it to the Emirates ID so it can be used like a health card,” Al Mehyas said.
Daman has more than 3 million customers across the UAE.
2 million transactions
“Even before we officially launched the service, we reached 2 million transactions through the Emirates ID.
“Last month, 200,000 of our customers used Emirates ID for medical related purposes,” he said.
“The company decided to stop printing Thiqa cards from November 1 and hopefully by end of this year or the beginning of next year, all other products will follow,” Al Mehyas said.
Daman has already linked its health card to a number of government entities including Emirates Identity Authority, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation and Ministry of Interior.
The idea behind linking most services to one card is to protect the environment, besides reducing fraud, errors and ensuring better service.
Daman has distributed 7,000 ID card readers across medical services providers in the UAE.
More than 30,000 individuals will be the first Thiqa members to benefit from accessing health care facilities using just their Emirates ID this month.
The figure consists of members whose health insurance policies are renewed between the first and 30th of November.
Thiqa members
The new initiative will eventually benefit all Thiqa members, of which there are currently around 833,000 in the UAE.
The two-day Digital Transformation Summit at Eastern Mangrove Hotel in Abu Dhabi concludes today.