GCC hospitals to achieve paperless mission

Paperless hospitals in the GCC could become a reality as early as next year, an expert has said. Offering better quality and safety measures, reduced errors, increased efficiency, improved practices and long-term cost savings, a truly paperless hospital will require changes across all levels, not just in technology terms, but in addressing every facet of how people work.

Joe Hawayek, a digital business expert at PA Consulting Group, believes that the commitments made by hospitals such as Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi and Sidra Medical and Research Centre in Doha, Qatar indicate the region will lay claim to its first paperless healthcare facility by as early as 2016.

“The eradication of paper medical records, the use of electronic data entry and retrieval of patient information in all care settings, specialisms and non-clinical areas is achievable by next year, especially in new healthcare systems, but a huge amount of work is still to be undertaken,” said Hawayek, one of the region’s foremost experts in healthcare technology.

The biggest challenges within the GCC and wider Middle East lie in the well-established, older and more traditional hospitals, where transferring patient data from paper to digital is time consuming and costly.