The United Arab Emirates city of Dubai has launched the second phase of the regional government e-claims project with its transition to a paperless claims system.

The first phase of the Dubai Health Authority's e-claims project launched in June, when the Dubai government's 100,000 employees were transitioned into an electronic claims system.

Now, all the other public and private insurance plans in Dubai, one of seven emirates of the UAE's federal system, will be using the claims system.

"The e-claims project not only helps generate real-time information and minimize insurance fraud but also is instrumental in the development of unified coding of medical information," Haider Al Yousuf, director of Health Funding at the Dubai Health Authority, said in a media statement. 

Prior to the implementation of the central claims systems, Al Yousuf said, non-standardized health information was leading to financial inconsistencies and created a potential breeding ground for fraud.

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The new claims system, created in partnership with the Johannesburg-based IT vendor Dimension Data, has a unified standard healthcare language across Dubai, with a central health data tracking system that helps share financial and clinical information between payers, providers, patients and the government. 

"The portal allows the department to effectively monitor insurance services, reduce abuse, report medical and pharmaceutical errors as well as monitor consumer behavior," Al Yousuf said. It "helps run a highly efficient health insurance industry in line with best international practices."

In other world health IT news,  the German federal Ministry of Health's e-health card initiative is eying the finish line, more than five years after its inception and after some growing pains. 

About 50 million German patients have been issued e-health insurance cards, linking them and their information with providers, pharmacies and public and private insurers. By 2013, German health officials say, the rest of the country is set to receive a card.

The Berlin-based organization Gematik, formed with the backing of Germany's providers and health insurers, is implementing the e-health card system.