Deepening Healthcare Relationships in Egypt and the Middle East

As representatives of KLAS, we were recently privileged to be part of Arab Health, the Middle East’s largest healthcare conference held in Dubai annually. We met with government officials and executives from healthcare provider and vendor organizations and learned a lot about the current state of digital transformation in that part of the world. On our way to Arab Health, we also spent time meeting with healthcare professionals, vendors, and government officials in Egypt.

We are excited to share what we learned in both instances. We are even more pleased to highlight how KLAS insights and services are and will be making a continued impact in both Egypt and the Middle East.

Working with Health Insights and Vodafone in Egypt’s University Hospitals

Egypt is a country eager for technology to improve care delivery and patient outcomes. Egypt's public healthcare sector has been undergoing a massive digital transformation in recent years with a focus on investing in healthcare IT. For example, Vodafone Egypt is currently contracted along with a number of key service providers for the universal health insurance program. The vendor is responsible for the overall delivery of the program, including ensuring the integration of every application within the solution architecture. This marks Egypt's first step at a large scale toward digitalization in the public sector. The Ministry of Higher Education is partnering on another project with Vodafone as the managed service consulting firm to implement an EMR in approximately 80 university hospitals who will be utilizing Health Insights as the EMR technology partner.

In meeting with the Ministry of Higher Education, we were able to learn firsthand the scope and breadth of their EMR deployments as well as their vision for healthcare in university hospitals across the country. We were privileged to do a site visit at Ain Shams University Specialized Hospitals, the first hospital live with the MEDiCACLOUDCARE EMR from Health Insights as part of the Ministry of Higher Education contract in Cairo. While there, we met with the executive team and department heads to understand more about their experience implementing the EMR. Based on those conversations, we know how important this massive digital transformation is for Ain Shams University Specialized Hospitals, so getting this implementation right is crucial.

This is where we come in; KLAS hopes to be instrumental in strengthening the collaboration between the healthcare provider organizations, Vodafone and Health Insights. Several of KLAS’ initiatives—including our implementation services with Landmark Insights and EMR improvement with the Arch Collaborative initiative—could be useful to help vendors and providers both succeed in this way.

Roughly 80 hospitals are involved in these large-scale implementations; the success of these initiatives could have a significant impact on the rest of the country. The healthcare providers in Egypt are interested in efficient systems that can be personalized to meet the needs of different specialties, and KLAS is committed to helping ensure that the transition to the EMR goes as smoothly as possible.

Arab Health and United Arab Emirates 

At Arab Health, we met with many healthcare IT vendors and providers and KLAS’ own board members in the region. During these meetings, we saw a great thirst in provider executives to have deeper collaboration and engagement with vendor executives. Providers want to tackle some of the big issues that they're facing and would like to see an event where they can do just that.

Given KLAS’ proven ability to bridge gaps between providers, vendors, and investors, we can help facilitate deeper collaboration to help solve big industry challenges. Each year, KLAS holds a global summit with attendees from Canada, Europe, Asia and Oceania, and the Middle East and Africa regions. 2023’s summit is this coming June in Portugal. Beyond that, KLAS is now considering how we can make a greater impact in the Middle Eastern region, perhaps by doing a summit specifically to address the needs of the Middle East region in the near future.

Outside of events, we are helping the United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Health with their technology decisions and to better understand the success of their national initiative around interoperability. The Riayati program is a digital healthcare platform aiming to have one national unified medical record for each citizen. This initiative recently went live, and KLAS will be validating the success of this work by interviewing the healthcare providers benefitting from this program. The Arch Collaborative is another way that KLAS is making an impact in the region as the initiative looks to better understand clinician EMR satisfaction.

2030 Vision for Saudi Arabia

During Arab Health, we learned that Saudi Arabia has a great thirst for digitalization. This is mainly driven by Saudi Arabia’s 2030 vision for their country.  Healthcare is one of the verticals they are working on to improve patient outcomes. They want to be an innovative and open country. As part of that initiative, the Ministry of Health is undergoing a massive privatization of their hospitals. This of course will create a whole different complexity when it comes to payer and provider relationships. Whereas before, hospitals didn’t need to worry about billing in a publicly funded system, hospitals will now need to think about implementing revenue cycle management solutions, for example.

KLAS has two board members from Saudi Arabia that are helping us facilitate most of the discussions around how KLAS can help with these initiatives. Saudi Arabia is a very strategic country in the Middle East for KLAS Research.

Qatar and the Arch Collaborative

Another Middle Eastern country that KLAS is keeping a close eye on is Qatar. Qatar has public health care for most of its citizens, with Hamad Medical Corporation being the largest public healthcare provider in the country. Hamad participates in the Arch Collaborative, and they’re working to understand how to improve their clinician experience through benchmarking and the adoption of best practices learned from other collaborative participants. A representative from Qatar’s Ministry of Health will be part of a regulatory panel at our upcoming global summit in Portugal.

What’s Next for KLAS in the Middle East and Africa

If you’re reading this and you live in the Middle East or North Africa, know that KLAS is here to help both the private and public sectors of healthcare. We are deeply invested in helping to improve the delivery of healthcare IT in your region.

As part of the KLAS mission, we recently kicked off a Middle East EMR study to specifically highlight the strengths of the EMR solutions in the region, and identify opportunities for improvement. We invite healthcare providers in the Middle East and Africa to participate in this research by sharing your experience. In return, KLAS will share the key findings from this research to help you and your organization make informed decisions and elevate the quality of EMR solutions in the region.

You may participate by completing an online questionnaire and scheduling a brief call with a KLAS representative to share your experience. All responses will be kept confidential; findings from all interviews will be reported in aggregate.

We look forward to collaborating with healthcare professionals, vendor executives, investors, and government officials to continually enhance the delivery of healthcare in the Middle East.

Photo credit: Alex Yeung, Adobe Stock