MENA’s leading digital health to convene in Dubai for eHWDC 2023

By Liam On Oct 23, 2023

A number of leading experts from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in digital health and related areas in the healthcare sector will meet at the end of this month for the 6th edition of the GCC eHealth Workforce Development Conference (eHWDC 2023).

The event will take place between October 31 and November 2, 2023 at the Jumeirah Emirates Towers and will focus on critical digital health topics including public health, health information exchange systems (HIEs), data management, artificial intelligence and workforce development.

The conference is organized by the GCC Taskforce on Workforce Development in Digital Healthcare (ZIMAM) and MWAN Events, and is part of ZIMAM’s mission to lead and promote a sustainable digital healthcare ecosystem through a skilled local digital healthcare workers in countries such as the United Arab Emirates. the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Achieving such an ecosystem is thanks to strong collaboration, says co-founder and main coordinator of ZIMAM, Dr. Osama El Hassan.

“This goal can only be achieved by creating an energetic ecosystem, in which government recruitment agencies, higher education institutions, healthcare educators and technology providers collaborate with public and private healthcare organizations to develop curricula, on-job training and attractive career paths helping young talent lead the digital healthcare transformation in the GCC,” he said.

ZIMAM was founded in 2016 when “digital transformation was still in its infancy in the GCC,” explains Dr. El Hassan out. “We had a lot of challenges. At that time we were more dependent on companies to help us develop these types of projects. But we realized that most of these projects were not sustainable. The only way to achieve sustainability in digital healthcare is to build our own workforce.

“From that moment on, we realized that this was a journey we had to embark on. And that is why we founded ZIMAM in 2016.”

Dr. El Hassan continues: “The idea behind ZIMAM is to promote digital health as a profession. So through our events and community building, we have managed to put health informatics on the map, and we have managed to make building a workforce around digital health a top priority in the region.”

DISCOVER DIGITAL ADULTHOOD AND MORE

HIMSS, the publisher of Healthcare IT News, will be present at eHWDC 2023, with the organization’s President and CEO Hal Wolf appearing at key panels and events. He is joined by HIMSS Analytics Regional Director for Europe and Latin America, John Rayner.

Commenting on his digital maturity session, Rayner tells us: “I think everyone has an idea of what HIMSS does; we are often associated with our ability to manage major events. But the side of the business I represent is really about patient safety, improving the quality of clinical care, reducing waste and using money and resources effectively.

“And unless you hear that firsthand — not just from me, but from other organizations where patient safety has improved — it’s often a difficult concept to understand,” he said. “So I will provide practical examples of how to improve patient safety, and how the use of digital maturity models enables healthcare providers to improve the overall quality of clinical care.”

Rayner continues: “(During my session I will focus on) the need to not only measure digital maturity across the entire system, but also to manage that entire system in a very intuitive and different way. Because ‘whole systems’ leadership is very different from being a leader in one organization.”

In addition, Rayner sits on the awards committee for the ZIMAM Digital Health Awards 2023, which will honor individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of digital health.

HIMSS MIDDLE EAST COMMUNITY MEETING

eHWDC 2023 will also feature a special HIMSS Middle East Community Meeting on October 31, allowing guests to network and interact with fellow professionals in the space.

“It’s often a great opportunity to network and chat with colleagues,” Rayner adds. “One of the things HIMSS does well is that we triangulate; we match people with a common need for a common solution.

“Over the last eight years we’ve been to hundreds of hospitals around the world, and that makes it very easy to match hospitals that are doing similar things with similar people and similar systems somewhere in the world to create a benchmarking partner or a benchmarking partner. reference site.

“That’s what the community meeting often does – or any social event for that matter – it facilitates conversations and allows me to make those connections for people.”