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Presentation prepared by Professor Omar Hasan Kasule Sr. MB ChB (MUK), MPH (Harvard), DrPH (Harvard) Research Consultant Almaarefa University.
Digital health is an
emerging interdisciplinary approach to improving health care using information
technologies. Our workshop will review the recent Saudi experience with this
innovative and revolutionary approach as part of achieving its sustainable
goals in health. Digital health provides instant communication, consultation, and data exchange among stakeholders in healthcare as well as between them and
their patients. Better communication and coordination lead to more efficient,
more affordable, more accessible, and more equitable healthcare delivery.
Information technology enables easy access to health information and health
data by segments of the population that had no access in the past and empowers
them to take action to improve their health. Appointments can be scheduled and
modified online, patients can be reminded to take medicines through their
mobile telephones (health), and family caretakers can be guided to nurse
patients. At a deeper level, this
technology facilitates healthcare processes. Patients can be monitored in
their homes without the need to come to the hospital for example blood pressure,
temperature, heart function, and respiration can be monitored by devices that
transmit information to healthcare workers via ordinary mobile telephone lines.
Further developments include imaging and blood diagnostic procedures without
the patient leaving his or her home. Physiotherapists can work with patients through
exercises remotely. Surgeons using computers can carry out surgical operations more
accurately and with fewer complications. A specialist surgeon in the capital
city can carry out an operation on a patient at a remote hospital. Future
possibilities become possible with every passing day.