Improved efficiency and patient safety through bespoke electronic thalassaemia care module

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the impact of electronic medical record (EMR) on improvement of healthcare parameters in a thalassaemia centre located at the Fujairah Hospital, Fujairah, UAE. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A hospital-wide EMR system (Wareed) was implemented across the hospitals in the Ministry of Health and Prevention, UAE, including two major thalassaemia centres. We aim to investigate the impact of this intervention across a number of healthcare parameters over two quarters (before and after implementation of the system). RESULTS: Since preimplementation data were not available for one facility, comparisons were made between parameters in two quarters in Fujairah hospital only. After introduction of Wareed, we found an increase in number of appointments (12%) (p=0.00), decrease in the number of appointment cancellations due to non-availability of blood products (p=0.02), reduction in the time to cannulation (p=0.00), decrease in number of physician days (p=0.295) among other parameters observed. DISCUSSION: Research shows that EMR systems have a positive impact on reduction in medical expenditure, improvement of healthcare quality and overall health outcomes. thalassaemia is highly prevalent in the Middle Eastern countries and drains the medical, social and financial resources of these nations. Our study is an attempt to create an insight into the difference in healthcare parameters before and after introduction of the system. CONCLUSION: Being the first of a kind in this region, our study created favourable evidence that introduction of an EMR has an overall positive impact on the healthcare delivery system for thalassaemia care.