Cerner Middle East

Health care providers must constantly strive to offer a safe, accurate and cost-efficient service to their patients. One company helping to facilitate that goal throughout the Middle East is global health information technology system provider Cerner, as Richard Halfhide reports.

Cerner is one of the world’s leading health care information technology system providers, and its mission statement—‘Health care is too important to stay the same’—perfectly sums up its forward-thinking ethos. What started as an entrepreneurial spark over 30 years ago has grown today into a multi-billion dollar company with a vision to transform the face of health care delivery.

Today, Cerner is proudly represented in 23 countries worldwide and its solutions can be found in more than 9,300 healthcare facilities, including 2,650 hospitals and 3,750 physician practices. Figures just released for bookings in 2011 show an impressive 37 per cent rise from 2010 to $2.72 billion. But the numbers only tell part of the story behind Cerner’s success. Its Middle East operations in particular have seen several exciting developments in recent years.

“While there has been a noticeable recent boom in health care investment in the region, Cerner has offered tailored solutions to clients in the Middle Eastern region for the last 20 years,” says Greg White, vice president and managing director of Cerner Middle East and Africa.

Building upon this sustained success, Cerner Middle East has had an operational headquarters in the region for the last seven years. Today, it partners with over 130 facilities throughout the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the State of Qatar and Republic of Egypt.

A major driver behind Cerner’s success in the Middle East is the fact that its systems are able to serve the needs of the entire spectrum of health care facilities, from small individual clinics to large hospitals and even national health systems. Earlier this year, the company signed a landmark agreement to digitise the entire health care system in Qatar, which encompasses all Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC)’s hospitals and primary health centres.

“Strong regional partnerships and support for government initiatives to develop the health care industry are key pillars of Cerner’s growth strategies in the Middle East region,” explains White. “Through a seamless electronic health record system, HMC will have the opportunity to enhance the safety, quality and efficiency of its facilities. We are delighted to support its transformation into one of the leading academic health systems in the world.”

Improved safety and increased efficiency are key watch words when talking about what Cerner’s technology brings to the table; however they only offer a very broad view of what the company is able to deliver. Numerous solutions have been carefully developed for use in a variety of clinical and administrative environments to serve specific needs.

One of Cerner’s core solutions is an electronic health record (EHR), which enables all of a patient’s clinical data to be stored in one location. This can include a patient’s medical history, future appointments, current medications, allergies, test results and scanned images. One key advantage offered to care givers by this system is the ability to gain a truly holistic view of the patient’s health through access to the data. With real-time information updated to the record, care givers are able to make effective and appropriate health care decisions far more quickly and accurately than would otherwise be the case.

Solutions that run on the Cerner Millennium platform can be implemented across an entire health system to both retrieve and disseminate information, meaning different departments can access and interact with a patient’s EHR while using solutions unique to that department. “By connecting individual departments in a hospital or health system, Cerner solutions can be deployed that provide subjective information and real-time, measurable data,” White explains.

The range of solutions available is staggering. There are tools developed for use in pharmacies, emergency rooms, critical care, imaging departments and laboratories—all with specific functions that ensure increased patient safety and maximized efficiency for care givers. In essence, the system allows fragmented care systems to fully interact and coordinate with one another. Processes are streamlined, helping to reduce error, variance and waste—priorities high on the list for any health care provider. Cerner systems facilitate faster ordering, documentation and billing, resulting in a swifter, more efficient service.

The benefits of Cerner’s systems to the institutions and their physicians and administrative staff are clear; however it should not be forgotten that the end result is also a highly improved patient experience—always a critical factor within health care delivery. Patients can be assured that confidentiality requirements are being met, and that their care is being assessed in a far more holistic, and therefore accurate, context.

However, White is keen to stress that Cerner is so much more than just a provider of IT products. “Viewing our solutions simply as IT projects is a poor way to explain what we do. We’re actively working with our clients to help them improve the health of their communities. IT enables the changes that need to be made in order to drive a shift in overall patient health.”

Cerner has a network of dedicated support staff who work alongside clients on a daily basis; and this team has doubled over the past 18 months. The team consists of predominantly long-term associates who have experienced the growth of the company. “These are Middle East-based people who bring years of experience to the table and have now the raised the bar of success,” asserts White.

As investment in health care infrastructure grows throughout the region, it seems that Cerner is destined to grow alongside it. One of its key goals for the future is to expand into Africa, a region also within White’s remit. He estimates that Cerner has spent somewhere in the region of $2.5 billion on research and development over the past decade, a staggering investment that more than backs up the company’s belief that health care is indeed too important to stay the same. And for those who interact with Cerner’s technologies, it seems that the face of health care will never be the same again.

www.cerner.ae