Health IT provider Orion Health from New Zealand has been appointed to build a health information exchange for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

According to a press statement, the system will provide a single, holistic view of medical and care information of around 32 million people at launch, with capacity to cover more than 50 million people. What is expected to be the "world's largest" HIE will take data feeds from over 5,000 government and private healthcare providers.

WHY IT MATTERS

Orion Health, which provides population health solutions across 15 countries, said the Kingdom wanted them to set up a data ecosystem that will enable it to analyse and manage large scale disease outbreaks, pandemics, and growing chronic conditions like diabetes by applying machine learning and AI. It also needs a system "that allows clinicians to make informed decisions and help keep people healthier, happier and out of hospital".

"Heading into a post-pandemic world, Saudi Arabia is the first country to revolutionise the delivery of healthcare for their citizens through technology and many others will follow," said Orion Health founder and CEO Ian McCrae.

THE LARGER TREND

In 2019, Orion Health delivered the first HIE platform in the Middle East. It bagged the contract from Abu Dhabi Health Data Services, a project company of Abu Dhabi's Department of Health and Injazat Data Systems, to build the Malaffi HIE. The system's initial go-live saw clinicians from four health organisations exchange and access information of about 2.3 million patients.

At present, the health IT provider is trying to close a major contract in North America. 

In other news, three Saudi hospitals under the Mouwasat Group and the Dr Sulaiman Al-Habib Medical Group achieved Stage 7 of the HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Records Adoption Model, which measures a health organisation's adoption and maturity of their inpatient electronic medical record capabilities. Meanwhile, King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh also attained the highest level of HIMSS Adoption Model for Analytics Maturity, which measures the analytics capabilities and advances of health groups.