Malaffi is the first Health Information Exchange platform in the Middle East and North Africa, connecting public and private healthcare providers in Abu Dhabi safely and securely. Malaffi provides the meaningful, real-time transmission of critical patient health information amongst healthcare providers, resulting in a centralised database of unified patient records that improves healthcare quality and results.
Celebrating its three-year anniversary, Malaffi is exhibited its next strategic solutions targeted at bolstering the digital transformation of the healthcare sector at the 47th Arab Health Congress, from January 24–27 at the Dubai World Trade Centre.
Malaffi featured a data quality dashboard at the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DOH) stand, which highlighted issues with the existing application of clinical data standards when healthcare professionals record clinical information in their EMR systems, which is gathered and available in the platform. Furthermore, Malaffi demonstrated an image exchange solution that is completely linked with the Provider Portal and will provide users access to diagnostic radiological pictures such as X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, and ultrasounds from patients.
Atif Al Braiki, CEO of Abu Dhabi Health Data Services, has been a key figure in the development and execution of Malaffi. Malaffi has been known as one of the fastest-rolled out HIEs in the world.
In an interview during Arab Health, he discussed future plans for Malaffi and its vital role in shaping digital transformation through developing an essential health information exchange platform.
Malaffi yesterday marked its 3rd anniversary, what did you see as main advantages of having a Health Information Exchange in Abu Dhabi?
One of the key advantages for Malaffi is really improving care coordination that's happening between the different stakeholders in Abu Dhabi. As you know, Malaffi allows the safe and secure exchange of medical record between all the healthcare facilities in Abu Dhabi that allows healthcare providers to coordinate the care better, which eventually then improves healthcare outcomes for the patients.
Abu Dhabi has done exceptionally well in handling the pandemic- can you please let us know what was the role of Malaffi?
Malaffi has played a vital role during the pandemic in consolidating and aggregating all the covered related data points from the medical record of the patients. We started with the PCR tests, all of them were consolidated under a central database, as it allows the different stakeholders or the public health department at the DOH to get near real time visibility on the spread of the disease. This also allows them to practice and execute early interventions within the community, and protect the community in Abu Dhabi, while healthcare providers will have access to Malaffi and see the previous report of that patient. During the vaccination rollout program, we have also been able to consolidate all the vaccine data into a central clinical data repository and combine it with the medical data record of the patients, which also provide better visibility on the rollout of the vaccine program.
What is Malaffi showcasing at Arab Health this year?
During this year, we're showcasing our next strategic project which is the image exchange across the healthcare sector in Abu Dhabi. Previously, Malaffi users had access to the radiology reports, and through this new enhancement they will be able to access and view the images taken at a different site in Abu Dhabi, including CT scans, MRIs, X-rays and other. This further prevents the need to duplicate these costly investigations which save patients from exposure to unnecessary radiation.
On Wednesday, you will be part of the Healthcare Transformation Talks – how does Malaffi support digital transformation of healthcare. What is next for Malaffi?
Malaffi was one of many digital health transformation programs of the Department of Health - Abu Dhabi. The ability to collect and centralise clinical data and draw significant population health insights using AI and predicative models is fundamental to digital transformation. As a pioneering project we learned a lot of lesions that we are looking forward to sharing with other projects being executed in Abu Dhabi, the region and wider at a global level.
