This prestigious honour celebrates his transformative leadership, innovative contributions to healthcare advancement, and unwavering commitment to elevating medical systems in alignment with Saudi Arabia’s ambitious socio-economic diversification agenda, Vision 2030.

With over 26 years of distinguished experience, Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Al Faraidy has emerged as a pioneering force in healthcare transformation. His unique combination of clinical excellence in interventional cardiology and strategic executive leadership has enabled him to guide major healthcare institutions through meaningful change and sustainable progress.

As CEO of King Fahd Military Medical Complex and a board member of key national institutions, including the Health Holding Company, he plays a vital role in shaping the future of healthcare in Saudi Arabia and influencing broader regional advancements.

Global Recognition And Academic Excellence
Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Al Faraidy’s influence extends far beyond national boundaries. In 2025, he was honoured as one of the “Top 100 Global Power Leaders” and the “Global 200 Inspirational Leaders” by global marketing giant White Page International. He also received the Stevie Award for “Thought Leader of the Year” and the Tribute Award for “Outstanding Contribution in Serving the Nation in Medicine.”

The veteran doctor’s academic credentials reflect a lifelong pursuit of excellence. He holds a Master of Science in Health Administration from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and has completed prestigious executive programmes at Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan School of Management, and London Business School. His keen knowledge and interest in artificial intelligence (AI) applications in healthcare, crisis management, and digital transformation have positioned him at the forefront of global health innovation.

A Vision Aligned With National Transformation
Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Khalid Al Faraidy’s leadership philosophy is deeply rooted in the principles of Saudi Vision 2030, which positions healthcare as a cornerstone of national development. As Chairman of the Nomination and Remuneration Committee and Board Member of the Founding Board Council and Executive Committee in the Eastern Cluster at the Health Holding Company, he has been instrumental in shaping the Kingdom’s healthcare strategy and governance frameworks.

His initiatives aim to advance value-based care models, speed up digital health transformation, and reinforce regulatory standards to ensure that healthcare delivery is effective and centred on patients.

Beyond his role at HHC, Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Al Faraidy has held influential positions within the Eastern Health Clusters, leading critical committees responsible for audit, risk management, compensation, and regional development. These appointments highlight the confidence placed in his strategic vision and his proven ability to navigate complex healthcare systems toward enhanced performance and improved health outcomes.

Career Defined By Service And Impact
Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Khalid Al Faraidy’s career uniquely combines clinical expertise with executive skills. He has served as President of the Saudi Arabian Cardiac Interventional Society. His leadership of the Strategic Cardiac Hajj Interventional Programme (SCHIP) demonstrated his ability to manage high-stakes, mission-critical operations with precision and compassion. This reflects his enduring commitment to community service, professional development, and ethical leadership.

Transforming institutions through innovation
A perfect example of Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Khalid Al Faraidy’s capacity to drive institutional excellence is his leadership at King Fahd Military Medical Complex (KFMMC). The facility achieved a historic milestone by becoming the first military hospital outside the United States to receive MAGNET Recognition for Nursing Excellence, a testament to its commitment to clinical quality and workforce empowerment.

He pioneered the establishment of the C.A.R.E. Office (Clinical Allocation and Resource Excellence), revolutionising clinical operations, staff deployment, and resource optimisation. Through the innovative TELL ME Project, he fostered transparent communication channels between employees and leadership, cultivating a culture of trust, engagement, and continuous improvement.

During his leadership, KFMMC successfully earned its fourth Joint Commission International (JCI) re-accreditation, reinforcing adherence to global standards in patient safety and care quality. Comprehensive facility renovations were also completed, significantly enhancing both patient experience and staff satisfaction while modernising the healthcare environment.

Empowering Change Through Medical Excellence
International Finance recognises Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Khalid Al Faraidy is not merely a leader of today, but also a visionary architect of tomorrow’s healthcare landscape, where innovation is guided by compassion and excellence becomes the standard. His career embodies more than a collection of achievements; it represents a narrative of purpose, resilience, and tireless dedication to improving health outcomes for all.

At a time when healthcare systems worldwide face unprecedented challenges, Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Khalid Al Faraidy stands for transformative leadership. His approach, grounded in integrity, strategic foresight, and measurable impact, offers a compelling blueprint for the future. The honour at the IFM Awards testifies to his management style, showing what is possible when medical expertise and visionary leadership unite in service to society.

The post Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Khalid Al Faraidy: Spearheading transformative healthcare in Saudi Arabia appeared first on International Finance.

The cases are from the journal’s weekly series that aims to baffle physicians by presenting difficult, complex situations in which the diagnosis isn’t immediately apparent. Using roughly 300 of these cases, Microsoft compared the performance of its MAI-DxO to 21 general-practice physicians. Microsoft’s team first developed a mechanism to simulate the iterative process that physicians usually follow when handling these cases: gathering data, evaluating it, ordering tests, and making decisions based on the findings.

“A collection of commercial AI models, including Claude, DeepSeek, Gemini, GPT, Grok, and Llama, were compared to the 21 physicians. The Microsoft team also created an Orchestrator, a virtual representation of the sounding board of colleagues and consultations that doctors frequently seek out in complex cases, to further mimic how human doctors handle such difficult cases,” the study stated.

Microsoft monitored the tests that the AI system and human doctors ordered to determine which approach could complete the work more affordably, as ordering medical tests in the real world is expensive. In addition to performing significantly better than physicians in determining the right diagnosis, MAI-DxO was able to do so at an average cost that was 20% lower.

“The four-fold increase in accuracy was more than previous studies have shown. Most of the time, there is a 10% absolute percentage difference, so this is a really big jump. But what really got his attention was the cost. Not only was the AI more accurate, but it was much less expensive,” Dr. Eric Topol, chair of translational medicine and director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told Times Magazine.

Since MAI-DxO is still in development, it is not yet usable for purposes other than research. However, implementing such a model could potentially improve patient outcomes by reducing medical errors, which contribute significantly to healthcare costs, and by increasing the effectiveness of human physicians.

“This is a startling result. I think it gives us a clear line of sight to making the very best expert diagnostics available to everybody in the world at an unbelievably affordable price point. We are nearing AI models that are not just a little bit better, but dramatically better, than human performance: faster, cheaper and four times more accurate,” said Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, during an interview with the Financial Times, while describing the trial as a step toward “medical superintelligence.”

According to Suleyman, when AI algorithms were first used in medicine ten years ago, they were primarily used for binary tasks like tumour detection in image scanning. Microsoft’s research even suggests AI diagnostic tools could reduce unnecessary healthcare expenditures whilst improving accuracy – as the United States’ health spending is approaching 20% of GDP, with an estimated 25% providing minimal impact on patient outcomes.

“Important challenges remain before Gen AI can be safely and responsibly deployed across healthcare. We need evidence drawn from real clinical environments, alongside appropriate governance and regulatory frameworks to ensure reliability, safety and efficacy,” said Microsoft’s research team.

He claims that these models are currently having very high-quality, fluid conversations in which they ask the appropriate questions, probe in the right ways, and recommend the appropriate testing and interventions at the appropriate times. An AI system may also benefit from not having many of the biases that come with being human.

“Across Microsoft’s AI consumer products like Bing and Copilot, we see over 50 million health-related sessions every day. From a first-time knee-pain query to a late-night search for an urgent-care clinic, search engines and AI companions are quickly becoming the new front line in healthcare,” the company said in a blog post.

“As demand for healthcare continues to grow, costs are rising at an unsustainable pace, and billions of people face multiple barriers to better health. We want to do more to help and believe generative AI can be transformational. That’s why, at the 2024 end, we launched a dedicated consumer health effort at Microsoft AI, led by clinicians, designers, engineers, and AI scientists,” the tech giant stated further. According to Dominic King, vice president of Microsoft AI, “Confirmation bias affects everyone. Clinicians occasionally think, ‘I’m sure this is just like the patient I saw recently,’ after observing something. However, AI has a slightly different way of thinking.”

MAI-DxO is not just a simple spit-out system. It does its work in such a way that doctors may be able to study and examine its reasoning. However, some medical and AI experts point out that Microsoft’s method isn’t wholly original because its diagnoses relied on the combined output of several AI models.

“In my mind, they are not testing any individual model that is optimised for healthcare. They are testing the concept of testing all of the models out there today and combining their decision-making. That part, to me, is not surprising,” Keith Dreyer, chief data science officer at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital Centre for Clinical Data Science, said.

Additionally, Dreyer notes that the findings do not necessarily mean that regulatory bodies like the US Food and Drug Administration, which has yet to make a determination on whether or not such systems qualify as medical devices, will approve them.

Microsoft is not alone in its pursuit of an AI-powered medical diagnostic programme. Google is creating a dialogue-based system to simulate the back-and-forth between a doctor and patient, replicating how real doctors gather data from patients and analyse those symptoms to arrive at a diagnosis. In preliminary testing, the system performed better than physicians in correctly diagnosing case studies of simulated patients. The previous iteration of Google’s system correctly identified 59% of cases in a 2024 test that was comparable to the one Microsoft conducted using case studies, while human doctors only did so in 33% of cases.

The true test will be how well these AI systems function in real-world healthcare settings. Understanding how AI could enhance or support a physician’s role in disease diagnosis is the next step. Topol remarks, “What they accomplished is impressive.” However, until they are implemented in actual medical environments, it won’t alter medical practice. Topol hopes the AI systems will be tested in various health systems so that physicians and the AI platform can be compared on a variety of more common and diverse cases.

A comprehensive clinical trial and regulatory agency approval are necessary to ensure that patients won’t suffer any harm from a greater reliance on AI-based decision-making in the provision of care. Dominic King states, “We are very much on that journey to create the evidence base required to support doctors and patients to make a difference in their health.”

Microsoft’s MAI-DxO marks a significant milestone in the integration of AI into clinical diagnostics, showcasing higher accuracy and lower costs than human doctors in complex cases. While still in development, the system’s potential to enhance medical decision-making, reduce diagnostic errors, and ease healthcare costs is compelling. However, the road to real-world adoption remains cautious. Experts stress the need for extensive clinical trials, transparency, and regulatory approval to ensure safety and reliability. Though not a replacement for physicians, AI systems like MAI-DxO could become powerful collaborators in modern medicine, offering second opinions and data-driven insights.

As tech giants like Microsoft and Google race to refine these tools, the healthcare industry stands on the brink of transformation. This shift must be approached with scientific rigour, ethical foresight, and a strong commitment to patient safety. Microsoft has already built other healthcare AI tools like RAD-DINO (for radiology workflows) and Dragon Copilot (a voice assistant for clinicians). It will now be partnering with hospitals, clinicians, and health organisations to further validate the technology in real-world settings. That’s where the real test will start for the tech giant.

The post Is Microsoft’s AI better than your doctor? appeared first on International Finance.

In 2024, public hospitals in New South Wales received nearly $51 million from parking fees. That was more than the $30.02 million in 2023. As per RMIT University’s senior faculty members Lisa Farrell and Meg Elkins, while the move may have sounded tempting for health infrastructures to exploit a captive market, the reality is much more complex, if one brings disciplines like economics, finance, and behavioural business into play.

Mismatch between supply and demand

Price is the means by which supply and demand are balanced, according to basic economics. This price is referred to as the equilibrium price. When supply cannot keep up with demand, prices increase.

“Due to the limited number of parking spots, urban hospitals face market conditions that, predictably, result in higher prices. In certain situations, however, suppliers may charge more than the equilibrium price if there is still a need for parking despite the cost, according to economics. In short, this ‘inelastic demand’ implies that a captive audience can be charged more,” said Farrell and Elkins.

“Hospital visitors and patients could be considered a captive audience. Although public transportation is well-served by many hospitals, patients and visitors are frequently too ill or time-constrained to utilise it. They are therefore forced to pay for parking. Visitors must drive because public transportation is either non-existent or very limited in rural hospitals. Do hospitals have a reason for charging such high prices, or are they price gouging, setting prices above what is deemed fair or reasonable, or are they exploiting the inelastic demand for parking?” asked the duo.

Hospital parking lots in desirable areas attract not only patients and visitors but also city workers and tourists seeking convenient parking. Parking spaces are kept available for hospital users by discouraging these users with high fees. High costs discourage overstaying in hospitals. Because of this, they are unable to engage in non-hospital activities (like shopping) following their hospital visit or appointment and before getting back to their cars.

Hospitals also charge high prices to raise revenue for health care. NSW Health said in a statement to the ABC earlier this year that additional funds generated from parking are used to fund medical facilities and services.

Makes sense to encourage visitors

“However, it might be a false economy to increase parking fees in order to fund hospital budgets. We are aware that hospital visitors play a significant part in patients’ recuperation. Therefore, extended hospital stays for their loved ones may result if high parking fees discourage guests or caregivers. More visits could result from less expensive parking, which would cut down on hospital stays and save a lot of money per patient,” remarked Farrell and Elkins.

Lisa witnessed this firsthand when her father, who has dementia, was admitted to the hospital.

“The hospital provided free hospital parking and round-the-clock visitor access for caregivers, like my mother, in this instance. For dementia patients, who frequently become confused while in the hospital, access should be available around the clock. Known as sundowning, this disorientation usually gets worse in the evening. The presence of carers allowed staff to concentrate on medical concerns. It made it easier to visit during off-peak hours, when parking is less of a problem and dementia patients usually require additional assistance,” she noted.

The high demand for a limited number of parking spots, which are rationed to those with the most money, is reflected in the high parking prices. Rationing based on need, or improving patient well-being, is a better option. Charging different users different prices is the economic solution.

By making concessions, the majority of hospitals have already accomplished this. However, concessions may vary by state or hospital. It can be difficult for some people to determine whether they qualify for concession-rate parking, and not everyone is aware that it is available.

“Therefore, before parking at a hospital, be aware of the fees and any available discounts if you are worried about the cost. The websites of most hospitals have this information. At the moment, most concessions are determined by income, including having a concession card. However, we must make a bigger change to offer need-based concession rates. For instance, accommodations are needed for long-stay patients to promote their well-being. Hospital parking fees for regular users should be capped nationwide, according to the media campaign,” Farrell and Elkins observed.

Although most parking lots have a daily cap, frequent visitors may soon accrue substantial bills from hospital visits for weeks or months. Many patients incur yearly parking expenses, especially those who need frequent treatments like dialysis.

Concession rates for hospital visitors should be granted based on need rather than just income. Patient welfare and the value of visitors to the healing process should guide needs. Proper rules are required towards this direction, especially for those who use the hospital parking lot, to streamline the procedure.

Considerations for long-term solutions, such as relocating hospitals away from desirable locations, are important when building new facilities or expanding existing ones. This approach could reduce the appeal of parking for individuals who do not use hospitals. Healthcare systems face the challenge of balancing the ethical principles of access and equity, which are vital for providing essential care, with the operational necessity of cost recovery.

“Meanwhile, with 1,190 parking spaces, Blackpool Victoria Hospital was ranked seventh in the UK. Costing £2.70 per car for two hours of parking, the car park can earn a potential revenue of £3,213 within two hours at maximum car park occupancy. This placed Blackpool Victoria, after Salford Royal, Darent Valley, Furness General, and Poole, as the fifth cheapest hospital in the UK to park at,” said Farrell and Elkins.

Moreover, there are 3,388 parking spaces at Manchester Royal Infirmary, which has the most parking spaces and could make over £10,000. Because it serves a large area and has a high volume of patients, staff, and visitors, this Manchester hospital, one of the biggest in the UK, needs a sizable parking facility. At £7.00 for two hours, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital has the highest parking fee. Given that the hospital is situated in one of London’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, the cost of parking there might be a reflection of both the area’s high parking demand and the hospital’s location.

Hospital parking fees, while justified as revenue sources, can impose emotional and financial burdens on vulnerable families. A shift to need-based concessions and ethical pricing is urgently needed.

The post Hospital parking: Costing more than care appeared first on International Finance.

Millions of US residents participate in medical tourism. Mexico and Canada, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean are some of their preferred locations to get state-of-the-art treatment.

As per the United States CDC (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention), people undertake medical tourism for reasons including cost (to get cheaper treatment in another country), culture (to receive care from a healthcare provider who shares the traveller’s culture and language) and availability of the procedure (to get a procedure or therapy that is not available or approved in the home country).

According to the Turkish Statistical Institute, some 642,444 medical tourists visited Turkey in 2021, a 66% increase from 2020. The report also included Thailand, Costa Rica, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Turkey, Colombia, South Korea, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Spain, Australia, China, and Indonesia as popular medical tourism destinations.

Most of these countries have already developed strategies to promote digitalization in their healthcare services, thus creating a demand for the best and most valued universal treatment methodologies, boosting the chances of more and more collaborations with foreign organizations.

Data Bridge Market Research published a report titled, “Health Tourism Market” in January 2023. It predicted that the health tourism market, which was worth USD 27.195 million in 2022, will reach USD 410.61 million by 2030, at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 40.4% during the forecast period 2023 to 2030.

“Health tourism is a subset of the healthcare industry that focuses on the needs of patients travelling across international borders for complex surgeries and medical treatments. Medical tourism is popular among global patients, owing to the low cost of medical treatments in developing countries, which is found to be very expensive in developed countries. Access to low-cost services and medical treatments from various tourism departments and local governments is a major factor in the global health tourism market’s growth,” the report remarked.

As per the Data Bridge research, medical tourism’s market growth will be driven by the adoption of connectivity technologies, digital platforms, and telemedicine.

The report also identified two crucial factors propelling the growth of the sector.

First of them is globalization, which has been a major driving force in medical tourism, allowing many consumers to obtain the highest quality and most affordable healthcare treatments. Apart from improving healthcare by 75%, globalization has also reduced treatment costs by 25%, especially for citizens of the United States and other developed countries.

Then comes the rise in the demand for Online Medical Agencies (OMAs). Most countries have developed strategies to promote digitized healthcare services, thus improving collaboration with foreign organizations. This gets further boosted with improvements in treatment methods, thereby increasing the demand for medical tours. Market growth is expected to be driven by the adoption of connectivity technologies, digital platforms, and telemedicine.

“As per recent research, the four most popular reasons given for why patients travel abroad to receive medical treatment were ‘Affordability (costly in home country)’ at 88%, ‘Accessibility (waiting period is high)’ at 66%, ‘Better quality (care and support services are better quality than the home country) at 38% and ‘Availability (not available in home country) at 46%. With these important reasons, the growth of Medical Tourism is inevitable; hence it is important to understand the positives and negatives of this growing trend across all sectors,” remarked an editorial in ‘Medical Tourism Magazine’.

Impact of medical tourism on formal economy

A report from ‘MEDTOUR PRESS’ states, “Incoming medical tourists and their activities during their stay, such as staying in hotels and accommodations, generate huge amounts of income for the host country. In order to better understand the amount of growth that this type of income has experienced it is noteworthy that in 2007, 750 thousand US citizens travelled abroad for medical purposes. In 2015 this number was 19 million. That is a growth of more than 250%. India is one of the foremost receivers of these patients, a country that is expected to make more than 7 billion Dollars from medical tourism by the end of 2020.”

Medical tourism encourages healthcare specialists to work in their home country, as the healthcare centres dedicated to medical tourism destinations provide their staff salaries similar to the ones in developed countries. This has also resulted in doctors from Europe and the United States moving into countries like Singapore and Thailand.

Also, countries eyeing to become medical tourism destinations are forced to upgrade their healthcare game, thus benefiting their own indigenous populations as well.

The prominence and fame of medical tourism have given rise to the medical tourist hospitality industry. Hotels and resorts are getting constructed to accommodate medical tourists. In 2015, 15% of the entire Thai medical tourism income was generated by the medical tourist hospitality industry.

Medical tourism has a complementary relationship with mainstream tourism as well. Medical tourists also visit the cultural, historical and natural attractions of their host country during their recovery period. A 2008 report from the World Health Organization stated that medical tourism pumped some 1.8 billion dollars into the mainstream tourism industry.

As destinations of medical tourism (dedicated healthcare centres) continuously upgrade their resources, associated industries like the pharmaceutical and surgical equipment sections experience business growth.

Medical tourism also helps in facilitating the improvement of relations between countries, thus giving good scope to pacts like the visa non-requirement ones. The cultural and trade exchanges between the nations also improve their GDPs.

COVID-19 & medical tourism

According to a MedicalDevice Network report, “GlobalData estimates that there were over 14 million inbound visits by medical tourists globally in 2019 and forecasts this number to continue to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 4.5% until 2024. Some of the fastest-growing markets are forecast to increase at CAGRs as high as 15% over the next few years.”

The report also talked about the pandemic introducing a new branch of medical tourism called vaccine tourism, which involves tourists from countries with poor pandemic response to use vaccination as the opportunity to travel and explore new places.

“Some travel packages even include vaccination as a key component of the travel experience. At first, this was most apparent among Canadian medical tourists in late 2020 and early 2021, when many chose to travel to the Southern US because COVID-19 vaccines were substantially more available in the United States than in Canada. So far in H2 2021, countries like Canada and other developed nations have caught up or even exceeded the vaccination rates of the United States, but the global distribution of vaccines remains a critical issue. A minority of wealthy individuals in many of the developing nations have thus also considered vaccine tourism,” the same report stated.

Now a CNBC report is suggesting that despite China’s full COVID vaccination rate crossing the 85% mark, given the “poor quality” of Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, many Chinese citizens are now flocking to Macao to get jibed with Western mRNA vaccines, due to the superior immunity offered by the latter.

Cons of medical tourism

A major risk for medical tourists comes in form of getting substandard medical treatment in another country. These tourists rely on the internet to get information about their treatment procedures, visas and other related details in the countries they are about to travel to. There is a lack of global governing standards in this field. SAGE journals’ previous studies revealed large variations in the information provided on the hospital websites and medical tourism facilitators, depending on the destinations and target markets. Based on a thematic content analysis of Canadian broker websites, Penney et al. found in 2011 that about 29% of those websites did not disclose the credentials of the foreign medical providers they promoted, and 47% did not mention risks associated with medical tourism.

While these dedicated healthcare centres are sometimes accredited by international bodies and staffed with specialised and experienced physicians, concerns remain on aspects like infections and side effects after medical procedures.

“Receiving treatment abroad involves squeezing a series of medical interventions into a short time span and the absence of follow-up care unless further trips are made,” SAGE journals stated.

Patients face two-fold risks, one of not having the option of returning to the same hospital to treat their post-operative side effects and secondly, they can also get exposed to other dangerous infections, during their treatment. In that case, they will have no other option but to get treated at hospitals in their own countries, thereby making the medical trip a bad investment.

“With patient travels, there is a significant risk of corresponding bacterial travel. Recent superbug research has created significant alerts. All industry professionals must understand the negative impact of communicable diseases. Hence, good strategies should be developed by global organizations to protect spread of such diseases. Understanding and control is vital,” commented ‘Medical Tourism Magazine’.

“It is true that medical tourism escalates the per capita rates of the host country but it escalates several other detrimental factors as well. For infrastructural growth, the natural greenery or forest cover of a region is compromised in order to accommodate more buildings, hospital facilities, roads, treatment or diagnostic centres etc. To supplement the above, there is a continuous discharge of polluted air, solid-toxic medical waste, litters of sewage consisting of oil and chemicals. Architectural, noise and visual pollution also have a direct negative impact on the atmosphere,” it remarked, while talking about the cons of visiting another country for critical treatment.

The post Medical tourism: Opportunity for the healthcare sector? appeared first on International Finance.

KHUH has recently hit the headlines after it adapted to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and developed a long-term storage solution without making changes to its existing Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS).

The 600-bed hospital faced limitations on the data maintenance front as their on-premise storage of medical images kept on getting bigger with every passing year. The AWS solution has helped the healthcare facility to reduce its data storage costs by 40%.

KHUH’s journey as the tech pioneer in Bahrain’s healthcare sector is sure to be a textbook reference for hospitals in other parts of the world wanting to make it big in the industry.

KHUH’s cloud-based solutions

By January 2022, the hospital had accumulated around one million image studies in some 476 million files. While the total data volume is around 44 TB (terabytes), to date, the hospital has been adding around 1 TB of new data monthly. Out of those one million image studies, only 94,000 from the timeline of 2011-19 were retrieved in 2021, and these nine-year data alone formed a 3TB volume. To simplify the equation, only 7% of PACS data was retrieved annually.

While these storage upgrade works kept KHUH’s IT staff busy until 2021, a state-of-the-art archival solution became a necessity. The innovation required to be an adaptive one towards future technological breakthroughs, while making minimal changes to the PACS system. That’s where Amazon Web Services stepped in with its S3 File Gateway and S3 Glacier. Now, the new on-premise data storage architecture keeps only medical images generated in the last four years, whereas AWS archives the remaining data. The hospital is now having the best information and communication technologies in Bahrain.

KHUH’s data infrastructure

While the Amazon S3 File Gateway provides a file interface into Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), these two together create a service and virtual software compliance, through which the hospital can store and retrieve objects in S3 file sharing, using the file protocol Server Message Block (SMB). The software gateway is deployed in the KHUH on-premises environment as a virtual machine (VM), which is running on VMware ESXi. The gateway then allows the medical image-related data to be accessed in S3 as files or file share mount points.

While KHUH used the solution to transfer the image data to the cloud without much modification to the existing PACS system, the latter uses the SMB protocol to store data on a Windows file server. If the data volume rises, the hospital adds IBM SAN (Storage Area Network) Volume Controllers (block storage virtualisation appliances from the IBM System Storage product family) to the Windows file server and creates new file shares.

These new file shares are then added to the PACS storage manager. The S3 file share added as another file share, helps the PACS system to store medical images on the S3 File Gateway.

While the initial solution architecture was developed with AWS, the Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class got roped in as well, as the healthcare facility onboarded more and more solutions. S3’s induction was done to store those archived data which may not be required immediately but can be easily retrieved as per the hospital staffers’ demand. The feature has flexible retrieval options, balancing cost with access times. KHUH’s goal was to avoid manual interventions in the data retrieval process, which is why the healthcare facility automated the whole operation. If the PACS system attempts to access a file from the Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class, an error message will be sent to the Amazon CloudWatch logs, resulting in an AWS Lambda function, aimed at retrieving image files via S3 batch operation.

“We have achieved our digital transformation by focusing on three vectors. Robotic process automation, AWS storage technology, and most importantly, empowering our in-house engineers,” said Hamad Saeed Abdulrahman, Director of ICT at King Hamad University Hospital.

But then, there was a catch as the KHUH didn’t have access to the image data in any of the S3 File Gateway cache or S3 bucket in the AWS Cloud, which prolonged the recovery process. To remove the obstacle, the medical facility deployed another S3 File Gateway virtual machine in their data centre. These gateways are addressed through a single domain name system with failover alias records.

Following the AWS Storage Gateway user guide, KHUH didn’t write multiple file shares to one S3 bucket and configured two Identity and Access Management (IAM ) roles to put the bucket in the failover architecture. The hospital’s on-premise application monitoring system checks the S3 File Gateways. If one of the gateways becomes unavailable, KHUH’s IT team gets a notification about the glitch.

While the hospital reduced the storage cost by some 40%, it achieved benefits such as higher durability for medical images, a reduction in administrative efforts like expanding the on-premise storage facilities yearly, and long planning cycles for infrastructure development. The KHUH can even carry out quicker changes in the archiving department.

KHUH Healthcare information system recognised by oracle

“After trying many other systems, we realised we had to build our own. Today, we are very proud to have developed HOPE. It has shown that it is a robust, user-friendly system with proven excellence over the years,” said Major General Dr. Shaikh Salman Bin Ateyatallah Al Khalifa, Commander, King Hamad University Hospital, in a recent Oracle report.

KHUH has been using HOPE since 2017. From scheduling, admissions, electronic medical records, lab testing, speciality care, pharmacy, catering, revenue management, or any other healthcare service, HOPE is the answer.

While the facility offers over 40 specialised treatments, it was finding it difficult to come up with a responsive hospital management information system. Eventually, they found a capable solution in the form of Oracle Application Express (APEX). This cost-effective framework provides application development at a faster rate compared to Java and Net programs. KHUH’s development of the HOPE portal relied heavily on APEX.

The hospital now has one application, which carries a suite of over 40 modules. Under it, the application development speed not only got increased by five times, but it also resulted in the creation of a paperless modern healthcare information portal, while saving 80% of the operational costs of the KHUH during its 10-year budget period savings exceeding the $40 million mark.

The healthcare facility has now diverted the saved money towards fulfilling the goal of becoming the first and only healthcare facility to connect to Bahrain’s National Electronic Medical Records (NEMR), National Healthcare Insurance Information System (NHIIS), and Drug Utilization Review (DUR).

KHUH has taken innovation to the next level with the development of its fully automated robotic pharmacy and chemotherapy preparations. During the COVID pandemic, apart from having robust virus testing and vaccination services, its telemedicine mechanism proved to be a game-changer as well.

Bahrain Oncology Center (BOC), under KHUH, currently possesses a fully integrated chemotherapy protocol workflow. Under it, some 300 protocols have already been integrated, with 30 more to go, to meet the goal of a cost-saving, safe medication management programme. Services, especially on the chemotherapy front, improved by leaps and bounds, as few errors and incidents got reported.

Currently, the hospital app has 5,000 users, including its physicians and staff. It registers some 4 to 5 million hits daily, apart from arranging 8,000 to 10,000 sessions in the same timeframe.

While access to real-time data and reporting has brought transparency in hospital finance and accounting, the institute now has an efficient budget control mechanism under its wings. All these are helping the hospital to prioritise patients and reduce waiting periods.

Robotic Process Automation: KHUH’s answer to COVID

King Hamad University Hospital has been no stranger to the entity called automation. Since the start of COVID, KHUH has worked to have robotic process automation that empowered it to make drastic changes to its operations to cope with the pandemic fallouts.

Beginning with the declaration of COVID symptoms, an RPA (Robotic Process Automation) mechanism was developed to integrate and operate multiple silo systems. The rota system sent an actionable email to all healthcare staff members to see if they had COVID symptoms. Following the identification of the infected personnel, an infection control mechanism will be activated, in which the healthcare facility will schedule testing appointments, initiate a quarantine action in the HR system, and notify managers/team leaders of the isolated employees. The system was operational from the start of the pandemic until mid-2022. Furthermore, this system enabled KHUH management to monitor trends and spikes, giving the hospital agile and proactive quarantine measures, which ensured healthcare provisioning and continuation of services.

The RPA took one week to create and another week to test. This quick rollout utilising current in-house technology had a significant impact on the hospital. A positive case would cause the action of having symptoms to be triggered by clicking on a staffer’s email prior to the start of the designated shifts. All of the preceding actions would be activated, and they would be assigned time slots to be tested in the quarantined COVID testing tent. The HR attendance system would be locked for the duration of the testing results, and their managers/team leaders would be notified so that any necessary shift changes could be made.

The rapid and agile deployment of the RPA inspired multiple applications and systems that coped with pandemic challenges, such as the lack of human resources and the extended duration of material deliveries. This will be discussed in depth in the next part of the article.

Migrating the hospital in Zero Operations Downtime

In early 2020, KHUH faced the complex challenge of core network replacement. Even though the cycle refresh was due, the medical facility wanted to ensure that not a single second of hospital operations would be disrupted. Putting matters into perspective, all KHUH systems that supported operations were on-premises. The hospital leadership came up with a three-tier plan.

Firstly, through Microsoft M365 SaaS (software as a service), KHUH was able to shift communication from on-premises to a cloud solution. That enabled two main success factors, more versatility in the user experience and connectivity, and independence for the current infrastructure.

The second plan was to virtualise all systems in place. Going from physical to virtual was a challenging task as all the systems were live and had to be accessible during working hours. KHUH utilised VMware virtualisation technology, with ICT engineers creating virtual copies of current running systems as they were running, and then utilised the time between hospital shift changes to replace the live physical system with the virtual copy.

KHUH was left with the access server hardware after virtualising all of the systems. Therefore, it enabled the hospital to have multiple server clusters, meaning that those servers could be moved seamlessly from one data centre to another. This was the main success factor behind KHUH’s core network migration.

The last tier was to segregate the network into different zones. In simple words, this operation was all about splitting a complex setup into many small segments, which are easier to manage. Furthermore, it meant that the engineers could migrate systems from affected segments.

Because all of the tiers were in place, the hospital’s migration went smoothly and was completed by mid-2022. Furthermore, the performances of all systems have been exponentially great. Faster response, increase in storage space and having an agile infrastructure are some of the added features achieved in this endeavour.

Going beyond standard Oracle Enterprise Business Suite

Another aspiring endeavour was the vast implementation of proactive systems that were developed and deployed in record time. The KHUH IT team has worked extensively to boost its current ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) with agile and proactive features to face the challenges imposed by the post-COVID period.

With its HR portal, mass hiring of health care professionals was already in place. However, maintaining the vast quantity of documents and licenses for each employee was a great challenge, especially during the pandemic times. Therefore, KHUH ICT developed an employee profile management system, in which staffers’ medical licenses with dates were maintained, managed, and scheduled. This system ensured zero congestion with renewals and regulation compliance-related issues.

The hospital’s ICT team also streamlined the maintenance of the healthcare facility’s bio-medical systems, through the creation of its custom bio-medical assets management system. Under this, all assets’ locations are tracked. It also listed the history of the maintenance works done on the assets. It also sets the planned periodic maintenance of each asset. The solution expanded the life of the medical equipment in KHUH, apart from enabling the pre-ordering of consumable parts per item, prior to shortages and supply chain stagnation.

Lastly, KHUH ICT managed, maintained, and automated the hospital’s sub-store inventory. This system empowers these sub-store managers for accurate item consumption history throughout days, months, and years. This also enabled department managers to easily transfer items between sub-stores and have the deliverables tracked and confirmed. Finally, an in-depth investigation on the maximum and minimum requirement of each item in each store has been digitised to enable auto reordering of those products, thereby stopping item shortages hospital-wide.

As for what is next in KHUH ICT plans, they have finished the initial testing of a supplier portal and moved it to a selective release in November 2022. This system completely transforms the procurement operations in the healthcare facility, as it enables its suppliers to update and upload their proposals and bids for any open purchase order, check the status of the awarded bid, and track the delivery dates through two-way communication and a delivery calendar.

Conclusion

King Hamad University Hospital’s case study is not any other success story of a healthcare facility. It shows the game-changing effects of disruptive technologies in the medical field. Embracing the technology has not only cut down the hospital’s daily mundane paperwork and operational costs, but it also ensured an improved patient care mechanism. Days are not far away when the KHUH model will not only be replicated across the Middle East but will emerge as a viable solution across the world as well.

The post Armed with RPA, KHUH revolutionises healthcare industry appeared first on International Finance.

Samuel Okocha

August 19, 2014: Owners of businesses are raising concerns over the economic impact of the Ebola virus, as business travelers cancel visits over fears of contracting the disease that have left more than 1,000 dead across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since the outbreak in March. Five persons have died of the disease in Nigeria.

With a fatality rate of up to 90%, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says Ebola is one of the world’s most virulent diseases. The infection is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected animals or people, according to the WHO.

Africa’s most populous country joined the list of Ebola-hit nations when a Liberian-American flew into the country with the virus, infected health workers and died in a Lagos hospital on July 25. Nigeria now has 12 confirmed cases of Ebola.

As the government battles to contain the spread, travel to the affected west African countries have suffered a drop.

In Nigeria, that drop is affecting business owners like Hassan Zakare, a tour operator and tourism consultant. Zakare runs Leisure Afrique, a destination management company with focus on inbound travels.

“We had some investors who were supposed to do some projects in real estate, construction and hotel development. They were to come into Nigeria and look at sites for those projects. But unfortunately, it’s now on hold pending the outcome of the success or otherwise of the fight against Ebola.

“Now if this fight goes on for one year, it means we will be in limbo for the next one year. Those projects will not take off. Money that we are supposed to make from those projects will not be made. Those are revenue lost.”

If the investors’ trip had sailed through, Zakare would have made between $3,000 to $5,000 on commissions from hotel accommodation and other tour packages. That’s the kind of money he gets on a fairly regular basis, helping him to pay staff salary and maintain his offices in Lagos and Abuja.

But as the Ebola scare forces potential clients to cancel trips, Zakare is embarking on cost cutting measures to ensure he remains in business. Those measures include relocating to a cheaper Lagos office.

“Business has been slow,” Zakare said. “It’s part of the primary reason why we are moving. This office occupies a four bedroom duplex. But we don’t need it any more because of the huge cost. We are moving to a smaller two bedroom apartment. Business has dropped so I need to move with the tide.”

Travel and tourism worst hit

“It’s a disaster for us in the travel and tourism industry,” Lucky George, national publicity secretary of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria, said. “Don’t forget we are in the peak of the summer, the period when most people take their vacations and travel with their families. They stay in hotels and also patronise recreational facilities.”

The outbreak of Ebola in west Africa forced several airlines to suspend operations to the affected countries. Nigeria’s Arik Air, the dominant airline from the sub region, is one of them.

“We expect revenues in the aviation sector to plunge downwards, which would affect both the airlines and the support industry (handling companies, oil marketers, catering, duty free shops),” Financial Derivatives, a diversified financial services firm, wrote in its report.

According to the firm, the economic impact of the Ebola scare will be felt most in the aviation, hospitality and tourism, trade, medical and agriculture sectors. “An analysis of these sectors’ contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shows that Nigeria may lose about $2 billion in the first quarter of the outbreak.”

Hassan Zakare, who runs Leisure Afrique, is shifting his office from a four bedroom duplex to a two bedroom apartment

Impact on affected countries, trade and ECOWAS

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) supports and encourages the free movement of persons within the region. But the outbreak of Ebola has restricted movement. “Give or take, that will have a major impact on trade,” Jide Fadahunsi, a Lagos-based analyst with an investment banker, said. “There are people who, for instance, ship to neighbouring countries as they bring in their goods to Nigeria by road. If the crisis worsens, that’s going to cause a drag on the economy.”

Fadahunsi, however, believes the economic impact of the Ebola outbreak remains insignificant in Nigeria. “To have a significant impact, there will need to be thousands of cases, so many that the labour market will be affected,” he said. “For now, I don’t see that happening as Nigeria has been able to contain the situation.”

While the larger Nigerian economy appears unshaken by the Ebola scare, the situation remains different in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — fragile economies — where the World Bank said agriculture had been hit with workers abandoning farming areas in affected zones. A food crisis looms.

Mining firms such as Australia’s Tawana Resources have shut down non-essential operations because of risk from the Ebola outbreak. Liberia’s finance minister Amara Konneh wrote on Wall Street Journal: ”When this crisis ends, Liberia and her neighbours will need international assistance to rebuild their battered economies.”

Measures to contain spread

The Gambia, a major tourism hub in west Africa, has banned flights from the Ebola hit nations. A number of regional carriers have also been forced to cancel flights to capitals of the affected countries.  In east Africa, Kenya suspended entry of passengers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Nigeria was excluded from that ban.

WHO is discouraging the imposition of blanket bans on trade and travel on Ebola-hit countries, as it maintains the transmission risk from flying is low. At the beginning of this week, the UN health agency called on Ebola-affected countries to begin screening of all passengers leaving through international airports, sea ports and major ground crossings. Authorities in these countries say they are implementing the measure.

Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, appears to be making progress in containing the spread of the Ebola virus disease.The health ministry on Monday said five patients have completely recovered and are now certified free of the disease. Government is, however, refusing to hold back. “Our strategy is to prepare for the worst by making plans to expand facilities to take any new cases while we hope for the best,” Lagos State governor Babatunde Fashola said.

The post Ebola ruins summer of Africa appeared first on International Finance.