SEHA enhance automation of medical records for patients and aims to achieve eGovernment vision, ‘One Patient, One Record’

The Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA) has enhanced the automation of medical record system for patients, which is known as the ‘Malaffi’ programme. The programme aims to reduce medication errors, to increase physician access to clinical information, to enhance response time to patients, and to eliminate redundant tests and data collection. 

SEHA has implemented the programme in a number of its hospitals and facilities, which has enabled six hospitals to achieve level six certification in the electronic medical records (EMR) Adoption Model of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).  This certification ranks SEHA hospitals among the highest ranking hospitals as compared to the United States of America and the Asia-Pacific region, which use the same model. These hospitals are namely CornicheHospital, MadinatZayedHospital, TawamHospital, Al Ain Hospital, Al Rahba Hospital, all of which attained the sixth phase of the HIMSS Analytics’ EMR Adoption Model during the years 2012 and 2013. 

As a result of SEHA’s efforts and commitment to improving patient care through device integration, SEHA has received many awards including the Cerner Achievement & Innovation Awards, during the 2013 Cerner Regional User Group Conference. Among the awards were: Best in Innovation, Best in Standardisation, Achievement & Innovation in Patient Care Delivery, Achievement & Innovation in Physician Experience, and Achievement & Innovation in Patient Care Delivery in Departmental Experience. 

During the press conference organised by SEHA to discuss the achievements of the Malaffi electronic system and its advantages, Mr.Saif Daoud Al Siksek Group Deputy, Chief Information Technology Officer of SEHA, said, “We are dedicated to providing healthcare to the people of Abu Dhabi in accordance with the highest international standards. This system provides more security and safety for patients when medicine is prescribed by doctors. It conforms to the highest international standards in the field of safety for medication administration. It is also a reliable source for medical records management and analysis, and aims to provide a complete medical record of the patient.” 

He continued: “SEHA benchmarks its hospitals against internationally-recognised best practices. At the same time, the company is keen to achieving the eGovernment vision – ‘One Patient, One Record' – the goals of which are to enable population health management across this developed system, along with chronic disease management, as well as providing an electronic system with wide reporting capabilities, in order to enhance research capabilities.”

Mr.Saif Al Siksek added that when a personal health record is rolled out, the Malaffi system will allow stakeholders to communicate with physicians, schedule appointments, and request refills at a countrywide level. It will also allow the possibility of maintaining and updating data in an easy and quick manner, and for government quality/regulatory initiatives to be implemented. In addition, the patients themselves can enjoy numerous benefits the overall cost was negligible in terms of interoperability issues and training costs, particularly for clinicians that practice at multiple facilities. In addition, the Total Cost of Ownership was significantly lower overall as a result. 

Mr. Bader Bader Al Qubaisi Corporate Infrastructure and Technology Manager ofSEHA, said, stated that one of the most recent achievements made as a result of the application of Malaffi is the integration between Malaffi and the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi (HAAD) sick leave reporting system. SEHA and HAAD agreed upon an integrated online sick leave process whereby physicians enter only additional information in Malaffi, and the data will then be electronically submitted to HAAD. This has reduced the time of sick leave issuance to one minute only, where previously the process used to take approximately 20 minutes. During the past four months, around 135,000 eSick submissions have been entered via Malaffi. 

He added: “Other advantages include converting manually written outpatient prescriptions to ePrescriptions. This has had considerable effect by reducing errors in the dispensing of medicines from pharmacies. Errors often used to occur as a result of obscure or unclear handwriting.” 

The implementation of the Malaffi programme has overcome geographic challenges which were faced by SEHA’s healthcare facilities, especially the reading of radiology films/images, which has been resolved by implementing a Central PACS Archive (Picture Archiving and Communication System). The Central PACS Archive allows radiologists throughout SEHA to read or consult on any radiology exam, regardless of where the exam was performed. For example; In order to read radiology films/images taken at 25+ SEHA Ambulatory Healthcare (AHS) clinics, AHS radiologists had previously been faced with the daunting task of travelling between diverse locations.   With the implementation of the Central PACS Archive the AHS clinic exams are now being read in less than two hours. Thousands of the Al Gharbia Hospital region’s radiologic exams are being read by radiologists from Al Ain, for example. 

The electronic system, known as Malaffi, was launched by SEHA in 2007. The system aims to merge all medical information on patients – such as medical records, pharmaceutical prescriptions, diagnostic information, and other data – that is held within all of SEHA’s hospitals and clinics deployed in Abu Dhabi, into one digital file. 

This initiative came as an additional step in the framework of the company's efforts aimed at improving the quality of medical care provided to patients in Abu Dhabi. 

Apart from being eco-friendly, Malaffi provides ease and speed of EMR access via medical staff for more than 1.7 million patients. The data involved usually includes date of symptoms onset, blood type, recommended medications, and X-rays, as well as other tests on patients. 

The system also aims to increase the speed in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, and to improve levels of healthcare, as well as reducing medical errors and consumption of unnecessary medications, and thus achieving a fast, safe and accurate service. 

Malaffi allows medical staff, whether doctors or nurses, to identify medicines used by patients, and those that are prohibited. This electronic system provides a complete record of the patient, and warns the medical staff, in the event of any problems or symptoms that result from the patient being provided with any new medication. 

The patient medical record also provides accurate information about medication that can be validly addressed to the patient, and the right dosage and right time to take such medication, as well as other matters related to the process of medication prescription and intake.