Dubai Health Authority(DHA) sets deadline for private sector to submit health data for 2013.

• All private sector hospitals and health centres to submit health data for 2013 by 17th June.
• Data used to get a detailed view of the health of the population in Dubai.
• Data will be analyzed to form evidence-based public health policies with a view to improve community health.

United Arab Emirates, Dubai, June 28, 2014: In line with the  recent circular issued by the Dubai Health Authority(DHA), the Authority has set July 17th as the deadline  for private health sector to electronically upload health data for 2013.

The Health and Safety Committee of the Executive Council, Dubai Statistics Centre and Dubai Health Authority are jointly working to collate vital healthcare data from the private sector. Data for the DHA public sector hospitals is currently available.
 
The data collected will be used to formulate evidence-based public health policies and strategies for the emirate with an aim to improve the health of the population.

The DHA and DSC recently held a workshop for 24  private hospitals and 100 health centres to educate them about the ways to use the system to upload this data. A helpdesk was also set to address any queries hospitals have with regard to uploading data on the system.

HE Engineer, Hussain Nasser Lootha, Director General of Dubai Municipality and Chairman of the Health and Safety Committee of the Dubai Executive Council had earlier stated that this initiative is highly important and that collecting this data will reflect the current situation in terms of health of the population and will aid develop evidence-based  public health policies in line with the Council’s  aim to formulate health objectives for the Dubai Strategic Plan 2021.

HE Eng Essa Al Maidoor, Director-General of the DHA reiterated the importance of evidence-based data collection and the role of smart services as a way forward to develop the health sector.

Dr Mohammed Al Redha, Director of the Health Data & Information Analysis Department at the DHA, said: “All hospitals in Dubai are already in the process of moving towards a paperless environment and this data upload functionality is being availed by these hospitals. The system is simple and uploading large amounts of data can be done easily.”

He highlighted that the type of data needed will identify the number of people suffering from various kinds of ailments, their age group, their nationality etc.  “The data is anonymous so patient confidentiality is protected. At the same time, the data is very detailed in nature which will help us during the policy-making phase.

He said the data collected will be published as it is an important source of information for the health sector and potential investors as well.