Aster Hospital Mankhool in Dubai has achieved Stage 6 of the HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model, making it the first private hospital in the city to receive the validation.

The eight-stage EMRAM measures clinical outcomes, patient engagement and clinician use of EMR technology to strengthen organisational performance and health outcomes across patient populations.

WHY IT MATTERS

In successfully validating against the EMRAM Stage 6 standards, the hospital joins a group of organisations across the globe who are committed to operating in a near paperless environment and who use electronic patient record technology to drive transformational change in all aspects of hospital inpatient care.

During the validation, the hospital was able to produce an impressive list of point of care devices integrated with the HIS. The list included vital sign collection instruments, a blood gas analyser, glucometer and cardiotocography equipment.

All doctors, nurses and allied health professionals were also able to demonstrate how care is documented in the hospital HIS. The hospital has also created a system that emphasises placing clinical orders and medication prescriptions in a digital format rather than on traditional paper forms.

Aster Hospital Mankhool operates under healthcare provider Aster DM Healthcare, which has 377 establishments in eight countries. Two of its hospitals in India – Aster Medcity and Aster MIMS Calicut – are currently undergoing the EMRAM assessment.

Veneeth Purushotaman, Group CIO of Aster DM Healthcare told Healthcare IT News that the organisation is on an aggressive digital transformation journey.

"We want to make all our patient-facing services available digitally and to ensure the patient has a seamless, omnichannel experience across hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, home and labs that Aster runs across the eight countries we have a presence in," he said.

"EMRAM is a globally accepted standard for digital health transformation and provides global benchmarking to assess ourselves against global standards. The goal in the next one to two years is to have Aster India reach EMRAM Stage 6 and the GCC health system reach EMRAM Stage 7."

THE LARGER TREND

Aster Hospital Mankhool's validation follows Dar Al Shifa Hospital which achieved EMRAM Stage 7 last month. Prior to that, another provider in the region which received the validation was Almoosa Specialist Hospital for EMRAM Stage 7.

ON THE RECORD

John Rayner, regional director analytics, EMEA, HIMSS, said: "The introduction of closed loop medicines administration resulted in an 80% reduction in medication associated error and an increase in clinician satisfaction from 2.8 to 3.3. The introduction of closed loop blood administration resulted in a reduction of blood sample rejections from 2.7% to 0.1% and positive feedback from members of the nursing teams. These are impressive statistics and must serve as a baseline going forward."

"It is a very proud moment for us at Aster DM Healthcare to be the first private hospital in Dubai to achieve EMRAM Stage 6! The team has been working relentlessly over the past few years to drive digital transformation across all Aster Hospitals. Aster Hospital Mankhool is the first one to be validated; this is the beginning of the journey for us on EMRAM accreditation and we are happy we have made a good start," Purushotaman said.

"We are glad that we received Stage 6, but we will continue to lift the benchmark to reach Stage 7. We have received a few recommendations which can maximise the potential of technologies we already use. So we will be working on those recommendations along with incorporating novel and innovative solutions, which will increase usability for our clinicians and also focuses on patient safety and patient satisfaction."