Dubai Health Authority collaborates with SAS and Dimensions Healthcare to establish Dubai Health Analytical Centre of Excellence

In line with the Emirate's strategic vision to become a preferred destination for domestic patients and a hub for global medical tourists

Dubai, United Arab Emirates (January 28, 2014) -- Dubai Health Authority (DHA) announced today its strategic collaboration with SAS and Dimensions Healthcare to establish “Dubai Health Analytical Centre of Excellence” (DH-ACE). The announcement took place during a formal signing ceremony at Arab Health, which is being held from January 27-30 at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre.

DH-ACE will be the path for transforming Dubai's healthcare data into into actionable intelligence to monitor and evaluate the financial outcomes of the health system. The predictive analytics insight is aligned Dubai's smart healthcare strategy around population health analysis, price analysis, waste monitoring, abuse detection, patient engagement, and health outcomes analysis.

His Excellency Engineer Essa Al Maidoor – Director General Dubai Health Authority, said: “This partnership comes at a key time for the Dubai Health Authority, as we work towards our vision to providing a world-class integrated health system that ensures excellence in both health and healthcare for the Emirate of Dubai and promotes Dubai as a globally recognized destination for medical care.”

Dr Haidar Al Yousuf – Director, Health Funding, Dubai Health Authory, said: “We will be utilising SAS' predictive modelling solutions to focus on lifestyle diseases and better understanding  the likelihood of onset and progression of disease, which will enable us to set in place policies and strategies to intervene earlier to avoid or delay the onset of disease.”

“SAS is pleased to partner with Dubai Health Authority and Dimensions Healthcare to further enhance the quality of healthcare in the Emirate. By using advanced analyticaltechniques from SAS on its data, we hope to support  DHA in its aims to better predict health risks and significantly improve quality of care, helping Dubai become a global benchmark in healthcare information management,” saidShukri Dabaghi – General Manager, SAS Middle East.

DHA will use a whole host of technologies from SAS in patient outreach and engagement by applying individualized, analytics-enabled, marketing approaches. These data-driven approaches help determine which cohorts of patients to engage for which purpose, and when and how to engage them. Predictive models from DH-ACE will also assist in healthcare fraud, waste and abuse management and DHA will have the capability to provide payers technologies to automatically and easily detect claims that do not follow the applicable guidelines.

Dubai Health Authority's DH-ACE initiative for a smarter, healthier Dubai will be powered by SAS Analytics allowing it to identify cohorts of patients with similar issues and preferences, and track and report the effectiveness of campaigns and identify ways to make future engagements more effective.

SAS has been working with the global healthcare industry for more than three decades now and works with several global health organizations in transformational projects in the healthcare industry.