Malaffi, the region’s first Health Information Exchange (HIE) platform, will now offer a new function that can predict the level of risk for an individual patient to develop certain chronic diseases or suffer an acute event.
It has added a Patient Risk Profile, now available to all doctors authorised to access the platform. Malaffi’s risk management solution uses advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and machine learning algorithms to build predictive risk models. This is based on the available population-level demographic of the UAE and clinical data.
Malaffi (Arabic for ‘My File’) is a strategic initiative of the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DOH). In the recent past, predictive models have been in use in several industries, including healthcare. Predictive analytics support better-informed clinical decision-making and enables provision of better-quality healthcare and patient outcomes.
Dr Jamal Mohammed Al Kaabi, Undersecretary of the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi, said: “We are committed to developing a healthcare ecosystem that has become among the leading and innovative systems in the world through deploying the latest artificial intelligence digital technologies to improve the quality of healthcare for the residents of Abu Dhabi and the region.”
The Malaffi Patient Risk Profile displays risk scores for each patient against a list of prevalent chronic conditions such as diabetes, congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic kidney disease (CKD), hypertension; and acute events such as a heart attack, stroke, and others.
Individual risk scores help clinicians make informed decisions and interventions to manage and prevent patients from developing potential diseases or being admitted to a hospital.
To identify patients at risk, the solution currently utilises clinical data such as diagnoses, chronic conditions and laboratory results. To further improve the accuracy, medication information will be added to the model in future releases. Malaffi connects almost the entire sector in Abu Dhabi, including all hospitals and 2,000 public and private healthcare facilities, and provides access to more than 45,000 authorised users to 900 million patient records for more than seven million patients. It also conforms to the highest standards of privacy and information security.
Robert Denson, Acting CEO, Malaffi, said this will empower providers with actionable insights to improve the health of their patients by proactively and preventively addressing their health needs.
“We continually strive to improve and expand Malaffi as a platform to serve the needs of the healthcare professionals and patients in Abu Dhabi, while supporting the government’s digital transformation of healthcare,” said Denson.
“Having connected almost all healthcare facilities, we can now maximise the clinical big data and the population risk platform that is already available to the DOH to deliver further value to the Malaffi users. We are proud to be one of the few HIEs in the world to extend such functionality to the clinicians through the Provider Portal.”
Dr Bakr Saadoon Ismail, Informatics Physician, Health Operations Management, Ambulatory Healthcare Services at Abu Dhabi Health Services (SEHA), said the Malaffi Patient Risk Profile was an important new development for practising physicians.
“The fact that these risk predictions are based on population-level data from across the Emirate combined with a comprehensive record of an individual’s medical encounters and visits to all healthcare facilities, improves the clinical care we provide to our patients,” said Dr Ismail.
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