Wolters Kluwer, Health today announced that Dubai Health Authority (DHA) has become the first healthcare authority in the UAE to integrate its flagship clinical decision support resource UpToDate® with an electronic medical record (EMR).
The initiative allows doctors, nurses and pharmacists across 18 DHA sites to access UpToDate from within the Salama EMR to make evidence-based clinical decisions for their patients and keep their medical knowledge up to date in a more seamless way. The UpToDate CME platform is accredited by DHA and enables clinicians to gain CME credits while applying their learning from UpToDate searches during clinical practice.
UpToDate is used by over 1.9 million clinicians around the world and is the only clinical decision support resource associated with improved patient outcomes and hospital performance. Over 100 independent studies evidence the benefit to patients, clinical teams and healthcare systems in terms of improving length of stay, efficiency and patient outcomes, and reducing error rates and healthcare costs.
An academic study in Japan on the effectiveness of CDS for reducing diagnostic errors showed that the error rate for patients seen by doctors equipped with UpToDate was 2% compared with an error rate of 24% for doctors who did not use the resource. Researchers at Singapore’s National University also found that use of UpToDate changed important patient care decisions 37% of the time.
In a survey of clinicians using UpToDate in their EMR, 93% said that accessing the resource via an EMR is important to patient care and 91% confirmed that having UpToDate available in the EMR enhanced their satisfaction with the EMR system¹.
Denise Basow, MD, President &CEO for Clinical Effectiveness at Wolters Kluwer, Health, said, “We are delighted to support Dubai Health Authority in their vision to provide world class healthcare across Dubai. Providing evidence-based clinical decision support in the clinical workflow is critical for driving consistent, standardized and high-quality care throughout a patient’s care journey.”
Dr Younis Kazim, Dubai Healthcare Corporation CEO, Dubai Health Authority, said, “Patient Safety is DHA’s number one priority and our goal is to be at the forefront of healthcare innovation that delivers significant benefits to patients. Making UpToDate accessible through the Salama EMR will support busy clinicians at the point of care to drive consistently high-quality care, minimize errors and improve hospital efficiency. We are pleased to partner with Wolters Kluwer on this mission.”
Dr. WadeiaSharief, Medical Education and Research Department Director, Dubai Health Authority, said, “As a resource for medical education and daily practices, UpToDateat the point of care for all DHA Healthcare Professionals can be accessed through the library platform and smart devices. Integrating UpToDateinto Salama showed light after great efforts from the library and Salama team to obtain and gain return on investment in patient care.”
¹July 2015 Clinician Survey, N=2,526
