Leading the path in Kuwait to Digital Transformation
Al Amiri Hospital, the presidential hospital of the Kuwait Ministry of Health, in Kuwait City, has completed the implementation of Harris Healthcare’s Flex solution for registration and outpatient clinical documentation at its state-of-the-art 415 bed expansion.
Al Amiri is a leader in Kuwait’s digital transformation and this first step has streamlined the patient registration and clinical documentation processes at the healthcare organization while increasing patient safety, provider efficiency and promoting standardization of care.
The project’s success was the result of a tight collaboration between Amiri’s clinical and technical experts with Virtus Health IT, a leading Kuwait based Health IT service provider, and Harris Healthcare. Working together, the teams performed an analysis of Amiri’s clinical workflows and instead of just simply replicating the paper flowsheets, the team streamlined them in the electronic system in order to optimize workflows and system utilization.
Harris Healthcare’s Flex integrates all aspects of patient care into a single, confidential, computer-based patient-centric record, reducing errors and improving workflow processes throughout the organization. With these enhancements, Al Amiri is one step closer to achieving its vision of digital transformation.
Al Amiri plans to interface Flex’s Physician Order module to their laboratory, radiology, and nuclear medicine systems to further streamline processes within all departments and improve patient experience. By eliminating manual entries, Amiri Hospital’ nurses and physicians can now spend more quality time with patients and are promptly made aware of critical changes in their status. Furthermore, Amiri plans to continue its deployment of Flex with functionality to help prevent medication errors and adverse events by providing checks, reminders and critical information to the care provider at the time of medication ordering, preparation and administration. The system has been of great utility in CAMA (Covid-19 Acute Management Area).
"We have had a great collaboration with Harris Healthcare’s clinical and technical teams to examine and evaluate how we could enhance Amiri Hospital’ workflow processes so that we not only improved the patient care experience, but streamlined clinical practices. Furthermore, we have integrated several first of a kind capabilities such as a Smart Pharmacy, ePrescription, Patient Portal, Telemedicine all of which are focused on making people’s lives better, from the patient to the clinician at the bedside and all the way through the health system. The current deployment is all set to serve as a Health Information exchange platform for the Amiri Governorate.”
Adnan AlRayes
About Amiri Hospital
The 418-bed Amiri hospital was built in the early 1980’, and later expanded its campus by including the Sabah Al Ahmed Cardiology Center and Thunayan Al Ghanem Gastroenterology center. In 2012, as part of its vision to expand the nations bed-capacity from approx. 7500 beds (2010) to 13,000 beds (2022), the Government of Kuwait awarded the contract for the construction of a design-build 415-bed extension to the existing Amiri Hospital to the joint venture lead by The Al Essa Group a core member of Virtus Holding, in a Joint Ventrure. The project, which started in May 2013 was handed over on 26th November 2018.
The project built over 142,000 sqm (1.5 Million sqft), consists of a new 4B+11 storey tower, including 381 patient beds, 34-day patient beds, and a 600-car parking garage. The program includes ICU, CCU, Dialysis, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine, Outpatient Clinics, Physical Therapy and Laboratories. Support functions include Pharmacy, Auditorium, Library, Medical Records, Administration, Food Services, Laundry and Environmental Management Services.
With a robust Computing Infrastructure platform that supports state-of-the-art technologies, ranging from an EHR enabled Hospital Information system, a smart pharmacy, a Perioperative system and a patient portal, the new Amiri expansion has earned the repute of being one of the most IT Enabled healthcare facility driving Digital Transformation in Kuwait.
