The health sector represents one of the most important elements of the public services sector that contributes to providing health services to citizens, and during the past two years in light of the new Coronavirus pandemic COVID-19, we have witnessed in all countries of the world, without exception, scenes of infected people crowding in front of hospitals due to the hospitals’ inability to accommodate the numbers of infected people and due to the limited number of infected people. Human and material resources, especially artificial respirators, oxygen cylinders, and intensive care beds. The situation has even reached mass deaths inside intensive care rooms as a result of the interruption of oxygen supplies for critical cases.
Here we find ourselves facing a problem that, through modern technology and digital transformation mechanisms, we can reduce its effects. The first step of digital transformation in the health sector is the electronic linking of hospitals and health facilities. By electronic linking of hospitals, we can build a database through which we can redirect patients, injured people, and emergency cases from hospitals. High-density hospitals can accommodate numerical pressure, thus achieving integration between hospitals and making the most of the limited capabilities of emergency rooms, blood banks, intensive care beds, incubators, ventilators, oxygen cylinders, dialysis machines, etc.
By integrating with ambulance and emergency centers, the system can direct ambulances to the nearest available hospital or care room. The system can also predict and provide advance notification of a shortage of medicines or blood groups by analyzing historical data for uses, and also predict areas that need special support and care to cope with an increase in pressure. Or the lack or deficiency in capabilities or even to deal with seasonal diseases.
Decision makers can also use data analysis tools within the system to reallocate the financial resources allocated to the comprehensive development plan in a more efficient and effective way, and identify needs, shortcomings, and absorptive capacities, whether in terms of geographical distribution or population density, based on historical data and coverage and response rates, and through the real-time availability of data. Hospitals, treatment facilities, ambulance centers, and blood banks at four levels: the national level, the governorate level, the center or neighborhood level, and the sheikhdom or village level, using a national identification number for each health facility and linking all hospitals throughout the republic to an electronic system, a unified network, and a central database.
By linking the database of hospitals and medical facilities to the database of beneficiaries of the comprehensive health insurance project, the state can provide better medical services to citizens.
