Medical data to be used to predict health patterns

The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) on Tuesday signed a collaboration with SAS and Dimensions Healthcare to establish the ‘Dubai Health Analytical Centre of Excellence’ (DH-ACE) on the sidelines of the Arab Health conference, being held from January 27-30 at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Health data is a broad term used to describe clinical as well as financial information gathered from different sources engaged in the emirate’s health care sector. Insurance claims, hospital transactions, medical reports and pharmacy prescriptions all contribute to the healthcare data of Dubai. This data has always existed, but will now be transformed into smart information that can be used to support population health analysis, price analysis, waste monitoring, abuse detection, patient engagement, and health outcomes analysis.

Haidar Al Yousuf, Director of Health Funding at DHA, said: “We will be utilising SAS’ predictive modelling solutions to focus on lifestyle diseases and better understand the likelihood of onset and progression of disease, which will enable us to set in place policies and strategies to intervene earlier to avoid or delay the onset of disease.”

The information will benefit all, said Essa Al Maidoor, Director-General of the DHA. “This is general information, which can benefit the individual, healthcare providers, health insurance companies, investors, and so on.

“It will improve the protocol of treatment, prescription of medication, what to avoid and what not, or what to invest in and what not. Based on this system all information will become available.”

As an analytical tool, the centre will fill a gap in the market as there is no similar system in the region. In addition, in anticipation of health insurance coverage of the entire population of Dubai, the system is expected to broaden the monitoring capacity of the DHA.

Al Yousuf said: The introduction of e-claims has made a huge difference in the quality and amount of data that we have, and the consistency of that data. Today the population in Dubai is 1.3 million, and all transactions are now updated electronically. As mandatory health insurance starts to cover the whole population by mid-2016, we expect to have a very good coverage of the population data. We are strongly moving towards using evidence for decision-making.”

Al Maidoor concluded: “This partnership comes at a key time for the DHA, as we work towards our vision to providing a world-class integrated health system that ensures excellence in both health and healthcare for the emirate of Dubai and promotes Dubai as a globally recognised destination for medical care.”
 

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