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The Dubai Health Authority’s (DHA) Primary Healthcare Sector (PHCS) revealed that 35,376 visits were made by its Smart Homecare Initiative team to treat patients from the comfort of their home.

PHCS also revealed that the launch of the Smart Homecare Initiative increased satisfaction in 2019 to 98.5%. Around 46,272 papers were also saved since the launch of the initiative to meet the goals of the Dubai Paperless Strategy, which calls on government entities to become completely paper-free by 2021.

The DHA launched the smart homecare services end of 2018 to provide homebound patients with safe, quality and timely healthcare services and to allow the multidisciplinary homecare team to contact healthcare providers via smart applications and devices for instant consultation.

The smart technologies used include wireless devices that are directly linked to DHA’s electronic health record system SALAMA, ensuring that patient records are updated in real-time during home visits via a secure web server.

The wireless devices include non-contact thermometers, auto-arm blood pressure monitor, 4g router, smart tablet, pulse oximeter, connected pocket electrocardiogram, blood glucose monitor, wireless stethoscope and a digital scope system.

The smart homecare services reduce waiting time, incidences of complication and guarantee timely availability of services, which is in line with the authority’s goals of achieving a healthier and happier society.

Dr Dhoha Al Awadhi, Head of Quality and Corporate Development at the DHA revealed that there are plans to expand its targeted segment as the initiative currently focuses on elderly, people of determination, , widows (in their mourning period) and children on dialysis and who require periodic medical care.

She said that in the next phase we want to expand and include paediatric Type I diabetes patients.

She added that the authority has developed a quality assurance scope that aims to ensure that technologies that are in line with international standards are adopted to better serve patients through the home visits.

The Smart Homecare project is the first of its kind in the MENA Region to utilise wearables and IoT Devices to address the needs of the geriatric and bedridden patients. The Smart Homecare project bridges this gap between the healthcare service delivery and patient needs. It serves as a uniform solution that can be used under various home care scenarios and settings.

Directly linking the devices to Salama also ensures compliance to documentation, well-coordinated care, which is critically important for patients who see multiple clinicians through the computer, integrated medical devices.

Dr Al Awadhi said that this qualified DHA’s Primary Healthcare Sector to get granted a “Diamond Status” accreditation from the ACI Qmentum International accreditation programme for its smart homecare services.

The DHA ‘s Primary Healthcare Sector received this prominent recognition after a team of specialized experts from the Canadian accreditation programme evaluated the smart homecare initiative and concluded it to be an innovative service, in terms of the service’s performance and ease of integration, that benefits patients.

Receiving almost a 100 per cent satisfaction rate for the smart homecare services qualified the Primary Healthcare Sector to receive the Diamond status of the ACI accreditation and Business Disability Forum

The initiative was also appreciated by the innovation Management System (TS-16555-1) certification. .

In addition the initiative won IDC Smart City Middle East Award 2019.