Doha

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has announced that the roll out of the Clinical Information System (CIS) for Rumailah Hospital and related services will take place on Friday.
During the go live, Rumailah Hospital will replace its existing paper-based patient clinical records system with the new electronic CIS. This is part of a phased roll out across HMC and Primary Healthcare Corporation (PHCC). When it is complete, all patient records will be stored and accessible electronically across the two organisations.
A period of transition is expected while staff and patients adjust. Rumailah Hospital staff will need to gather more information from patients in order to register them in the new system, which may mean that appointments will take a little longer than usual.
Dr Abdul Aziz Darwish, medical director of Rumailah Hospital, explained that his team has put a number of processes in place to ensure as smooth a patient experience as possible, but asked that patients show understanding during the transition period.
“I want to reassure the public that all patients will be seen within a clinically appropriate time frame, regardless of this system implementation. We will ensure the transition period is as smooth and as quick as possible and we look forward to the system being up and running,” he said.
Dr Darwish explained that the CIS is one of the strategic programmes for the corporation and will ensure the hospital can provide the safest, most effective healthcare to the population of Qatar.
“A patient’s data only has to be put into the system once and after that it is available to the whole care team. This means that ultimately healthcare professionals are able to focus more of their time on supporting the patient and less time on paperwork.”
Women’s Hospital, Al Wakra Hospital, the National Centre for Cancer Care and Research, Heart Hospital, Al Khor Hospital and The Cuban Hospital, as well as a number of PHCC clinics have already rolled out the CIS system over the last 12 months with a positive impact. Clinicians at these facilities now have access to a single electronic health record of their patients at their fingertips whenever they need it.
The CIS is a comprehensive system-wide change that has been designed in collaboration with clinicians to ensure that patients receive the safest and most effective clinical care. Through the implementation of this system, clinicians and healthcare providers will be able to access a patient’s healthcare history, prescription information, clinical notes and other important information electronically. The system will change the way all staff work across HMC and PHCC, supporting them to integrate care across multiple provider sites.
The importance of an electronic medical records system was set out in the National Health Strategy for Qatar launched in 2011. To address this national strategy, HMC and PHCC launched the CIS program in 2012, which is one of the most ambitious and important programmes for the organisations’ future.