ABCK-AmCham Kuwait’s Healthcare Focus Group in collaboration with Viatris, Dell Technologies, and CISCO hosted a webinar on ‘The Digitization of Kuwait’s Healthcare Sector’, with the support of the U.S. Embassy of Kuwait and Kuwait’s Ministry of Health (MOH). The event focused on different aspects of the digitization of the healthcare sector, its strategic approach in reducing the cost of innovation, and it highlighted healthcare facility efficiencies through digitization of systems.
The event started with the opening remarks by AmCham Kuwait’s Chairman – Pete Swift who welcomed the participants and gave a warm welcome to Eric Podzorski, the U.S. Embassy’s Senior Commercial Officer. Swift also welcomed and thanked the Chair of the event Dr. Fatma Al Najjar, Assistant Undersecretary for Private Medical Services Affairs at the Ministry of Health.
During her opening remarks, Dr. Al-Najjar stated “The Ministry of Health has already implemented various digitalized processes which have proven to be a great help and success; especially during the early days of the pandemic of COVID-19 and thereafter. There is no other area in healthcare that offers so much potential for increasing efficiency, improving medical quality, enhancing patient safety, and achieving sustainable economic success as digitalization.”.
Tamer El Sallab, Chair of AmCham Kuwait’s Healthcare Focus Group opened the discussion by introducing Dr. Gabriel Jipa who spoke on the topic of The Healthcare Digitization Strategy and Innovation. Dr. Jipa highlighted the key components of digital healthcare, along with cost optimization for innovation and how to bring a new perspective and innovation together. Dr. Jipa finalized his presentation by discussing the challenges and the opportunities of data-driven systems which involve tackling challenges for how this data will be utilized and protected, as well as artificial intelligence regulatory frameworks and how these can be done in a safe and ethical way. “Digital strategy is not a goal by itself, and it must be tied to the outcomes that are expected, and it should be aimed towards the benefit of the healthcare ecosystem.”- Dr. Jipa.
Following the discussion, Rabih Saad, Senior Engineering Manager -GCC at Cisco Systems, highlighted that this is a crucial time for the use of technology to change our world and build bridges to the future of care. Saad gave in-depth information about Healthcare’s main pillars which include operational transformation which enables the transformation of digital and physical healthcare spaces, enabling healthcare systems, applications, and users to connect at scale. The second pillar focuses on security, the third pillar focuses on remote patient care through telehealth and virtual care, and the last pillar is the data-driven clinical workflows and hybrid cloud platforms.
Subsequently, Russell Mayne Healthcare Field Director, MERAT (Middle East, Russia, Africa, and Turkey) at Dell Technologies, addressed the topic of Cybersecurity in the healthcare sector and how we can use a standards-based approach to drive healthcare digitization. In his presentation, he spoke about the exponential growth of patient data, which has led to an increased number of healthcare cyber threats. He mentioned that the utilization of healthcare digitization must be done with a strong foundation of secure care. Cyber-resilient strategies must be in place because without it, organizations put themselves at risk of a successful attack. This would have significant financial, organizational, operational, and clinical impact. Mayne suggested that to digitize with intent and focus, organizations and governments should look into utilizing a standard system from organizations like HIMMS (Healthcare Information and Management System Society Standards) which are internationally recognized. This provides focus on governance, workforce, interoperability standards, Cyber-resilience, Patient-focused, and have strong regulatory clarity. The presentations were followed by a Q&A from the audience.
To finalize, Dr. Rihab AlWotayan, Director of International Health Relations at the Kuwait Ministry of Health stated, “Kuwait’s Ministry of Health Kuwait is looking forward to collaborating with AmCham Kuwait in creating new opportunities in the digital health field by serving the patients in simplifying the system”.
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