His Excellency the Minister of Health, Dr. Abdullah Abdulaziz Al-Rabeeah, has given directives to circulate the follow-up program of ambulances and electronically monitor their movement. This is in order to maintain the patients' health and safety, and guarantee the reaching of emergency and ambulatory cases to the health facilities as fast as possible.
This was pointed out by the Undersecretary for Planning and Health Economics, and the Head of Information Technology and Statistics Committee, Dr. Mohammed Al-Yamani. He went on adding that the Ministry introduced several advanced technological services and programs, in order to raise the efficiency of the Ministry's performance, reduce the proportion of errors, and lower the waste rates during this year's Hajj season.
Meanwhile, during a press conference held on Tuesday at Mina Emergency Hospital, Dr. Al-Yamani made clear that the "Health Electronic Surveillance Network (HESN)" program comes at the forefront of the new technological programs, launched by the Ministry of Health (MOH) this year. He went on pointing out that this program manages the Ministry to electronically control and combat the infectious, epidemiological diseases, to the effect that it provides those working in the health field and decision makers with precise information enabling them to provide a high level of health services. This is through recording the epidemiological cases, and the basic vaccinations, in addition to other health services and programs enhancing the level of the community health. It also contributes to unifying the efforts towards better health for the individual, family, and community. It helps unify the health operations, models, and reports in the Kingdom as a whole; and it is to increase the precision of data and abridge the difference in terms of their recording between the regions and facilities affiliated to the Ministry of Health. Finally, he affirmed that in the next two years, the Ministry is to circulate this program in order to cover the entire regions of the Kingdom.
Within the same vein, Dr. Al-Yamani added that the Ministry of Health, this year, developed the project of monitoring and following up ambulances, to the effect that currently, via this project, the movement of ambulances is identified and they are followed up as well, in addition to identifying the level of route crowding; in order to direct them to the easiest routes leading to the health facilities they are to go. He further pointed out that the project was implemented to 156 ambulances working during this year's Hajj, after having been provided with the required communication devices.
He also drew the attention to the fact that the Ministry, this year, introduced the electronic fax program as a program enabling the Ministry's hospitals to communicate with the Command and Control Room of the Mina Emergency Hospital; in order to handle the cases and refer them to the proper hospital. Such a device helps gather all the faxes at one place, and enables the staff to electronically forward the information of the cases to the officials to tackle it at once.
Furthermore, Dr. Al-Yamani pointed out that the Digital Electronic Pen Program is one of the specialized technological programs which contributed to raising the efficiency of the Ministry's performance during this year's Hajj. Thus, it helps record the illness cases, and receive the information in a highly precise way, in addition to making a copy of the information written down on paper. He went on pointing out that this Pen, applied to 5 health centers, is to save 1000 paper models, which can be, later stored on the computer.
And he affirmed that these programs comes as part of the electronic health strategy of the Ministry of Health, to the effect that any program proving its efficiency is to be circulated, making clear that the health information system of the hospitals is one of the systems that proved its effectiveness during the Hajj. It has been applied to 7 hospitals in a number of health areas; it is to be applied, at the beginning of the next year, to 30- 40 of the Ministry's hospitals.
Dr, Al-Yamani concluded that the Ministry of Health (MOH) moved from imitation to innovation, and became a codified authority for services in addition to its providing and implementing. Also, its technological projects earned several awards as far as the Kingdom and the Middle East are concerned.