In the regional healthcare industry at the Arab Health Exhibition 2010, IBM- the world leader in developing groundbreaking technology to cater to a multitude of industries- showcased their latest innovative and smart approaches to modernize the healthcare industry in a conference, which took place in Dubai. During this conference, IBM presented their latest technological solutions that kept pace with the rapidly changing demands of the industry, with a focus on improving patient healthcare across the region.
IBM has a reputation for providing healthcare organizations with solutions that improve patient care and also lower costs. Throwing light on the latest innovations from IBM, Takreem El-Tohamy, general manager IBM Middle East and North Africa said, “A smart healthcare system that is instrumented, interconnected and intelligent means healthcare organizations will benefit from real-time information, shared efficiently between doctors, patients and insurers, through the application of collaboration technologies and smart analytics.” The two latest innovations presented by IBM were:
1. Hospital Bedside Terminal
This system enables doctors and nurses to retrieve and display medical records and digital radiology images at the patients’ bedside, while patients can use it to access entertainment and Internet services, or speak to nurses on duty via the video-call feature.
2. Patient Centric Healthcare
This is an electronic health record system that refers to a medical record from many locations or sources in digital format. Data stored can include patient demographics and medical history, medicine and allergy lists, laboratory test results including radiology images, billing records and advanced directives.
IBM’s endeavour in bringing these innovations to the healthcare industry is to enable healthcare providers with a better medium for cross-department collaboration, sharing data and insight across geographies, allowing for a reduction in the time needed to transfer records, results and medical histories across the organisation; all this eventually leading to a more efficient and higher quality healthcare for the patient.
“These innovations will not only allow healthcare organisations to share information in real time with ease of access but they go as far as improving research, diagnosis and treatments,” added Takreem El-Tohamy. “In an industry that finds itself at a critical stage with increased costs of healthcare becoming prohibitive to many patients, IBM’s technologies and services enable organizations to become more efficient and cost effective, thus streamlining their organizational processes and becoming smarter entities offering the highest level of care.”
Written by Snigdha Taduri for Biomed-ME