Work on Oman's National e-Health strategy begins

MUSCAT -- The Ministry of HealthMinistry has started preliminary work on Oman's National e-Health Strategy, says Dr Ali bin Mohammed bin Moosa, Minister of Health. The National e-Health strategy aims to have Oman's entire health sector working on digital systems where these systems interoperate for a proper and safer continuum of patient's care, he said in comments to Oman Observer.

At any registered point of care, clinicians will have full access to up-to-date patient e-health records for reviewing medications patients are on, allergies they may be having, results of recent investigations, etc. This will help clinicians to make appropriate diagnosis and make their decisions efficiently, safely and promptly. The implementation of the e-Referral Engine is progressing well. It aims to facilitate patients' referral from one level of care to another and from one healthcare facility to another.

It is expected to enhance continuity of patients' care through ensuring, using a number of procedures, that back-referral notes from referred institutions reach back to the referring healthcare facilities. The e-Referral engine will definitely reduce time of the appointment booking process for referred patients, which would have an impact on the care and satisfaction of patients.

The preparation to start the implementation of e-notification Engine is on schedule. The e-Notification engine is set to play a significant role in facilitating a number of notifications that take place within the health sector, including notification about certain communicable diseases and other conditions including notifications of births and deaths. Ministry of Health has started using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) since early 90's to re-engineer and streamline its operational processes.

The MinistryMinistry has comprehensive and tightly integrated information systems tailored to each type of institutions, namely health centres, polyclinics and hospitals, covering the primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare. Even though all the important institutions in tertiary care, secondary care and most of the primary care are computerised, the ministryministry's priority is to implement the information system in all its institutions. Currently, Muscat Governorate, Al Dakhliyah and Al Wusta regions have 100 per cent of their institutions computerised.

The ministryministry is working on a plan to computerise all the remaining institutions in all the governorates and regions in near future. The ICT system has facilitated easy retrieval of patients' records and patients' movements from one department to another including different clinics, laboratory services, radiological services and even the pharmacy.

Electronic records have made remarkable improvements in, and have ensured continuity of, care of patients by making clinical information readily available to different clinicians in different departments and specialties dealing with the same patient. In addition, this would definitely have important cost savings through preventing duplicate investigations and treatments.