The Ministry of Health (MOH) has released the latest version of “Citizen’s Voice” service through a special application for IOS/Android-run smartphones. This application offers the “Citizen’s Voice” System; meant to give voice to citizens, through this application or the MOH Portal (
www.moh.gov.sa). The service enables citizens to submit their complaints, enquiries or suggestions, and have their voices heard by the officials.
This was announced by the Advisor to the Minister of Health and Supervisor General of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Dr. Abdullah Al-Weheibi, who said: “Complaints and suggestions have been linked automatically to the competent departments, thus ensuring fast delivery of messages to the concerned body, and enabling users to follow up the messages until they receive responses.” He added, “Response duration must not exceed three working days, varying according to the topic. And in case the response is belated, the message will be automatically escalated to higher officers. Once responded to by the concerned department, the message will be marked done by the concerned employee. An SMS and email are to be sent to the citizen (complainant) at each of the complaint phases to keep them informed of its progress.”
Dr. Al-Weheibi pointed out, “The MOH’s applications for smartphones offer a wide range of services, including the Children’s Vaccination Reminder Service; meant to reminde the citizens and residents of the dates and types of vaccinations. This service seeks to help bolster parents’ commitment to bringing their children for having the basic or stimulating dozes of vaccinations; with a view to protecting them against the diseases and their serious complications, Allah Willing.”
Furthermore, the MOH’s applications include E-Directory Service; meant to enable people to view all the governmental hospitals, health facilities, and their contact numbers throughout the Kingdom. The service shows the geographical location of each hospital or health center on the map, and arrange them by the nearest using GPS technology, in addition to showing the directions from the current location to the required hospital or health center.
Within the same vein, Dr. Al-Weheibi stated that the ICT launched, via the MOH Portal, an e-program to measure patient’s satisfaction. He added that the system is designed to facilitate the collection and submission of questionnaires by the employee at patient relations section in the hospital through using modern technologies such as the Web. “The feedback and results of questionnaires are saved electronically for using them later in assessing the degree of patient’s satisfaction with the services provided at hospitals, by means of getting the most accurate reports and statistics from the filled questionnaires, as well as getting the proportions and results to evaluate and improve the level of the employee performance at hospitals,” said Dr. Al-Weheibi.
He underscored that this step comes as part of the MOH’s efforts to make best use of the modern technologies, to improve its medical services and gain the patients’ and beneficiaries’ satisfaction with the MOH services offered to them.