DHA holds workshop in IT infrastructure in healthcare

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 4, 2014: The Dubai Health Authority recently held a workshop with Gulf Data to discuss the importance of IT infrastructure management and storage solutions.

Dr. Mohammad Al Redha, director of health data and information analysis department  at the DHA highlighted that in the years to come healthcare organizations will have no choice but to invest in more IT infrastructure and storage and therefore the process should begin as early as possible.

This series of workshops and support initiatives to encourage the DHA health sector to be electronically integrated is in line with the DHA’s long-term vision to implement the Dubai Smart Healthcare Model that was launched by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, at Gitex 2013. The model includes three components: smart operations, smart applications and smart hospitals.

Dr Deepak Kaura, Chief Radiology Officer of Sidra Medical and Research Centre at Qatar said that the future of information technology in the healthcare sector is rapidly evolving and that huge flow of data will may require up to 12GB of storage capacity to save genome data of a single person.

Demand for long-term storage solutions of large amounts of data will grow in the future and the need to manage complex IT landscape and large amount of data will challenge the healthcare system,” said Dasha Deckworth, director of global managed services at Atos.

Kaura said the introduction of a plethora of wearable devices like Google Glass, sports, fitness, heart rate and activity monitors will increasingly be augmented by connectivity to the emerging number of smart-watches and glasses devices that become available over the next five years. This means not only will the hospital infrastructure move towards electronic integration, devices for health monitoring, fitness and wellbeing are also moving in the same direction.

Redha highlighted that there are several options available for hospitals to look into e-health and e-data storage and management and that the DHA is keen to support them in this endeavor.