DoH announces 95% of Abu Dhabi based hospitals now connected to Malaffi

Malaffi, the Health Information Exchange (HIE) platform, one of the key initiatives of the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DOH), has announced that 95% of hospitals within Abu Dhabi that use Electronic Medical Records, have connected their systems to Malaffi. Malaffi now safely and securely connects a total of 1075 public and private facilities across the Emirate. Adhering to the highest standards of security and privacy, Malaffi allows the meaningful, real-time exchange of important patient health information between healthcare providers, creating a centralised database of unified patient records. This marks a significant step towards bringing the Emirate of Abu Dhabi closer to its goal of connecting all of Abu Dhabi’s healthcare facilities later in 2021, with all hospital EMRs expected to be connected in the coming months.

This milestone means that over 35,000 doctors, nurses and other members of care teams have access to Malaffi and are able to make better-informed, more efficient and safer decisions thanks to access to important medical information, such as patient visits, medical conditions, allergies, procedures, lab results, radiology reports and medications, collated from 37 different EMR systems.

H.E Dr. Jamal Mohammed Al Kaabi, Acting Undersecretary of the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi, said: “In Abu Dhabi, we have achieved an important milestone in transforming the healthcare sector by connecting most of the Emirate’s hospitals and a large percentage of other healthcare facilities. This will contribute to improving the sector’s performance and providing the best levels of care to residents of the Emirate. Thanks to the directives and support of the wise leadership, innovative platforms such as Malaffi play a prominent and pivotal role in this transformation, the subsequent development of a stronger, more informed, and knowledge founded healthcare system.”

Atif Al Braiki, the Chief Executive Officer of Abu Dhabi Health Data Services, the operator of Malaffi, said: “Reaching this milestone is a truly wonderful achievement for Malaffi. It signifies a key milestone for us that gets us closer to seeing every provider in Abu Dhabi, both public and private being connected. In the last two years, we kept our focus clear on our mission to enable a safe and secure exchange of patient health information to enhance quality healthcare and patient outcomes. We look forward to further successes in 2021”.

Since launch, we have witnessed significant participation and interest from the medical community, including the Emirate’s largest healthcare groups such as SEHA, Mediclinic, Mubadala Health, NMC, VPS and UEMedical. In a survey of Malaffi users, reduction in duplication of laboratory and radiology investigations, as well as prevention of allergic reactions, were noted among the most valuable benefits of Malaffi. Other benefits recognised by the medical community included Malaffi’s role in improving the speed of diagnosis, supporting clinical decision-making, and reducing medication duplications and errors, together with improving efficiency of the healthcare system.

Dr. Martin Lascano, Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, and member of the Malaffi Clinical Advisory Committee, commented: “At Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, our patient-centric model involves multidisciplinary teams so it is critical that all caregivers know and understand the patient’s needs. Wherever they have received prior treatment in Abu Dhabi, Malaffi now allows our caregivers to have a much clearer picture of the medical history of the patient we are seeing, which improves patient experience and helps us establish a trust-based relationship. We are working closely with the team at Malaffi on continual improvements of the system and maximising its potential in a way that will help us provide better care. Patients are thrilled to know that we now have such a system in Abu Dhabi, and it reassures them that they are taken care of in the best possible way.”

Key to the success of Malaffi is the ease with which the platform has integrated into hospitals’ existing EMR systems. In a survey of healthcare providers by KLAS Research, a company which engages with end-users to gather insights aimed at improving healthcare delivery, Malaffi stakeholders were universally satisfied with the system. They reported seeing positive outcomes in terms of prevention of repetitive testing, higher quality and more accurate care, and easy access to patient data from other providers. Almost 25% reported noticing immediate outcomes and over 50% have seen outcomes within just six months. Organisations confirmed that the data they have access to provides real value and are looking forward to continued feature developments.