Saudi health ministry has signed a partnership agreement with BMJ, one of the world’s leading medical knowledge providers, to provide unrestricted access to its online learning, decision support tools, quality improvement platform and journals for health professionals across the Kingdom.

The five-year “Executive Agreement for Cooperation in Health Learning and research” was signed recently during a ceremony at the Department of Health in London in the presence of Saudi Health Minster Dr Abdullah Al-Rabeeah and the UK’s Undersecretary of State for Health, Anne Soubry.

The agreement come in line with the Saudi government’s 20-year workforce transformation strategy to improve the consistency and quality of healthcare throughout the Kingdom.

Speaking at the ceremony, Al Rabeeah said that online services are being introduced to help medics and paramedics stay up-to-date with the latest advances in the field of medicine.

Thousands of healthcare professionals employed by MoH hospitals, National Guard, Ministry of Defence and Aviation, Ministry of Interior and private hospitals will benefit from open access to a selection of BMJ’s renowned evidence-based journals, learning, decision support and quality improvement resources, he stated.

BMJ chief executive Tim Brooks said: “The agreement provides clinicians across the Kingdom with the very best tools to develop their knowledge and skills, practice evidence-based medicine, and improve outcomes for their patients, with access to medical information covering 10,000 topics in over 20 specialities.”

“The BMJ is committed to achieving high quality, evidence-based healthcare for patients throughout the world. We are very proud that the Kingdom has chosen to collaborate with us on this important project and we look forward to sharing our expertise with the medical workforce of this country,” he added.

The deal provides the MoH professionals with open access to resources such as BMJ Best Practice, offering fast and easy access to the latest research evidence, guidelines and expert opinions at the point of care - in hospital, at the clinic or on a mobile device, enabling clinicians to make the best decisions for their patients.

Clinicians will also have free on-line access to seven key BMJ Journals covering the latest research, news and expert opinion: Heart, Gut, DTB (Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin), EMJ (Emergency Medicine Journal), British Journal of Ophthalmology, BJSM (British Journal of Sports Medicine) and Journal of Clinical Pathology.

Another major resource is BMJ Learning, which is a fully accredited online learning module covering over 1,000 medical specialties and clinical areas, allowing clinicians to study at their own pace and convenience. This includes an online platform which supports individuals and teams through healthcare improvement projects and onto publication in the BMJ Quality Improvement Reports journal.

“This provides the necessary framework, learning modules, tools and resources to make healthcare improvement simple,” said Brooks.-TradeArabia News Service