The Ministry of Health (MOH) has launched today (Tuesday) an introductory campaign on the Epidemiological Surveillance Program «HESN» through social media. The program is a reliable source of public health data in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which helps decision-makers and public health practitioners to prevent the outbreak of diseases and epidemics, in addition to improving public health outputs.
MOH has underlined that the importance of HESN lies in its online surveillance of communicable diseases and epidemics to develop effective control tools. It also helps monitor basic immunizations, unify health processes, forms and reports across the Kingdom, and minimize surveillance disparities throughout different health affairs and facilities. This will - in turn - provide both health professionals and decision-makers real-time precise information to offer top quality health services.
Presently, HESN features several modules, including: Communicable Diseases and Epidemics Surveillance, Epidemics Outbreaks, Immunizations and Vaccinations, Material Inventory, Business Administration and Organizations and Public Health Reporting.
It is noteworthy that Saudi Arabia is the world’s second state to implement such cutting-edge system. It is an electronic platform to help public health programs and health sectors to have access to preventive information through increasing the quality of the surveillance programs and rapid intervention against communicable diseases and epidemics, and information integration among health sectors, as well as a unified network to collect and archive public health data.