The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) has set July 17 as the deadline for private health sector to electronically upload health data for 2013.

The Health and Safety Committee of the Executive Council, Dubai Statistics Centre (DSC) and Dubai Health Authority are jointly working to collate vital healthcare data from the private sector. Data for the DHA public sector hospitals is currently available.
 
The data collected will be used to formulate evidence-based public health policies and strategies for the emirate with an aim to improve the health of the population.

The DHA and DSC recently held a workshop for 24 private hospitals and 100 health centres to educate them about the ways to use the system to upload this data. A helpdesk was also set to address any queries hospitals have with regard to uploading data on the system.

Hussain Nasser Lootha, director general of Dubai Municipality and chairman of the Health and Safety Committee of the Dubai Executive Council had earlier stated that this initiative is highly important and that collecting this data will reflect the current situation in terms of health of the population and will aid develop evidence-based public health policies in line with the Council’s aim to formulate health objectives for the Dubai Strategic Plan 2021.

Dr Mohammed Al Redha, director of the Health Data & Information Analysis Department at the DHA, said: “All hospitals in Dubai are already in the process of moving towards a paperless environment and this data upload functionality is being availed by these hospitals. The system is simple and uploading large amounts of data can be done easily.”

He highlighted that the type of data needed will identify the number of people suffering from various kinds of ailments, their age group, their nationality etc.  “The data is anonymous so patient confidentiality is protected. At the same time, the data is very detailed in nature which will help us during the policy-making phase.

He said the data collected will be published as it is an important source of information for the health sector and potential investors as well. – TradeArabia News Service