A leading hospital in Kuwait City has partnered with Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Aruba to fully optimise its network infrastructure, it has been announced.

Al Amiri Hospital, which serves approximately 400,000 patients per year, has now reportedly established “99.9% network availability,” which has facilitated its continued “introduction of remote healthcare, staff mobility, and other digital healthcare services.”

The implementation has also “facilitated [a] 60% reduction in hospital footfall while serving same patient volumes and increased appointment efficiency by 120%.”

WHY IT MATTERS

According to a hospital source, it is hoped that Al Amiri’s partnership with Aruba, along with full digitisation, will result in a HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) Stage 5 certification.

“To enhance our operations, we were seeking a HIMSS EMRAM Level 5 certification and aimed to establish ourselves as a smart hospital that offers digital services and advanced technologies for patient care,” said Al Amiri Hospital director, Ali Al Alanda. “We recognised that a secure, reliable, and high-performance network infrastructure would be essential to achieving this ambition.”

The HIMSS EMRAM incorporates methodology and algorithms to automatically score hospitals around the world relative to their EMR capabilities.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

According to the International Hospital Federation (IHF), Al Amiri Hospital was able to rapidly digitise and transform its services at the onset of the pandemic, enabling a connected healthcare ecosystem.

Within 48 hours of lockdown, for example, the hospital established “Derwaza”, a digital platform facilitating the home delivery of medicines.

Its digital team was also able to introduce COVID-19-specific reporting and analytics tools to help track trends and manage patients.

Derwaza now reportedly also handles patient registration, prescription management, and appointment booking.

ON THE RECORD

“Nearly overnight, we had a pressing need to serve thousands of patients remotely. We suddenly had to manage remote network access for thousands of people, and the platform not only delivered the performance we needed, but also effectively protected the network from the fifty plus attacks and malicious access attempts we typically faced each day,” said Raed Syed Hashem, head of Al Amiri Hospital’s Disaster Management Team. “Today, we still have over 400 patients per day who receive remote consultancy. This is not only more convenient, but it has also enhanced appointment efficiency by 120% as we have been able to manage scheduling and staff utilisation in a far more effective manner.”