Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

Good Practices and InnovATIONS in Public Governance
duplicate diagnoses and medication. Doctors, nurses and paraprofessional staff spent
huge amounts of time preparing statistical and administrative reports that were not
very accurate, and there was no way to audit and track those reports. There was also
a lack of raw data available for researchers, due to a significant number of files misplaced
or lost.
The Solution
The Al Shifa system became fully operational in 1997. The system maintains an audit
trail that begins with the patient’s initial records and documents all new information
about the patient’s condition and treatment, noting the date and time that changes
are made to the file and who made the changes.
The system has been built to fit the local environment, comply with user requirements
and allow easy electronic exchange of medical information among health institutions.
The system was developed by following international standards and considering
interoperability during the design and implementation phases. The entire
system, including the source code, is owned by the Ministry of Health, so any modifications
and customization can be done in a cost-effective manner.
E-mail and message services have been integrated into the system, and they are used
to inform and remind patients about their health-care appointments. Appointment
management is fully handled.
Al Shifa also provides comprehensive, online data reports in response to inquiries.
Users can define search criteria for retrieving and displaying only the desired information,
which can be viewed from any workstation. Thanks to interfaces with laboratory
and radiology equipment, diagnostic test results are fed to the system automatically,
reducing human errors in data entry and saving technicians time.
The system handles all procedures of transferring patients from one institution to
another (say, from a health centre to a polyclinic or hospital). An “e-referral engine”
automates functions like appointment requests, consultation feedback reports, requests
for a second opinion. In addition, the system takes care of administrative tasks
like out-of-office replies.
Because Al Shifa is meant to simplify the work of health professionals, the system is
continuously enhanced to make it friendlier. It includes a billing module that calculates
fees and treatment costs, taking in consideration exempted groups (like birth
spacing, immunization). Finally, the system includes drug expiry management. A
few months before the expiry date of each medication in stock, the system generates
an alert about how much supply is still available, so excess quantities can be used by
other institutions.
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