Mediclinic Middle East’s Shared Allied Services is committed to providing solutions for the healthcare challenges of today by integrating the latest technologies and diagnostic capabilities in radiology, laboratory, and precision medicine. It further aims to bridge the gap in research and innovation for an accelerated response to future needs and demands.
As its director, Dr. Ramzy Ross is passionate about creating sustainable and pioneering approaches that deliver effective results. He enables this by applying learnings from various areas of healthcare, health sciences, innovation and technology, and research.
While healthcare data represents one-third of all the data collected around the globe, a significant majority (about 95 per cent) of this data is not effectively being used by healthcare organisations to help improve patient care, according to a recent report by Intel. Driven by this fact, Dr. Ross said that wielding the power of data is at the heart of everything Mediclinic does.
“Advancing approaches with new ways of working, digitisation of workflows, patient engagement and harnessing the power of data and smart analytics all form part of our approach. Fundamentally, this will continually contribute to enhancing experiences and outcomes for patients under our care,” said Dr. Ross, whose background is in cardiac and respiratory diagnostics with interests in precision medicine, radiology and laboratory services.
Securing access to better health
Shared Allied Services at Mediclinic Middle East continues to evolve its continuum of care with key strategic approaches that are built on the foundation of quality, evidence-based healthcare whilst also ensuring accessibility and delivery of care is provided in the best way possible.
“Our approach is not only about the treatment of poor health but being preventative’ (of ill health and disease) and supportive on the maintenance of good health. This is key to our approach and is enabling us to take healthcare to new advanced levels,” Dr. Ross added.
As a result, Mediclinic Middle East widens its focus to the whole population versus only on individuals that use healthcare for treatment purposes alone. “Fundamentally, this approach is enabling us to expand our healthcare provisions,” he added.
Adoption of strategic approaches
Mediclinic Middle East is currently in the process of developing and delivering a regionally leading ‘integrated diagnostics’ approach to provide clinicians with streamlined and seamless inputs of data from a range of diagnostics services.
“This is to ensure that our clinicians are even better positioned and informed to provide increasingly higher standards and personalised care to patients faster,” said Dr. Ross.
The enhanced holistic approach features inputs from precision medicine (such as genomics), laboratory, radiology , and pharmacogenetics alongside functional medicine approaches, which specifically look at lifestyle, nutrition, behaviour, and psycho-social factors.
“Further, we are continually focused on expanding our testing capabilities and molecular biology will increasingly play an important role here. In addition, we are looking to add validated functional medicine-related testing capabilities, covering areas such as microbiome, proteomics, and hormone assays, among others,” he added.
Generally, our development approach takes various forms from hardware to software. For instance, AI-based supportive diagnostics solutions in radiology to cutting-edge technologies in genomic medicine including next-generation sequencing and applications of molecular genetics on disease diagnoses (for example, infections and cancers).
Diagnostics challenges and patient care
The field of diagnostics is fast-paced with the need to be highly responsive to patient and clinical needs, while maintaining high service quality and short turnaround time standards. Efficiency is also under scrutiny when responding to unique challenges such as the pandemic or other crises.
“Technology, innovation and approaches are evolving at a remarkable pace, so we are continually working to ensure that we not only keep up with the pace of developments but also lead change in our service provisions and offerings to continually secure our position as a leading provider,” said Dr. Ross.
Shared Allied Services at Mediclinic Middle East aligns itself with rapidly evolving technologies and regulatory frameworks as it works on improving its versatility and responsiveness. Considering this requires multiple departments to function effectively with one another within the organisation, the healthcare provider is always working to improve related processes.
Understanding the potential of pharmacogenetics
Pharmacogenetics represents a key pillar of Mediclinic’s precision medicine offering and the approach enables them to continually improve individualised patient care.
For instance, plans are underway to launch testing capabilities in focus areas such as cardiology, diabetes and neurology, where medications can be customised according to patient-specific genetic profiles, which according to Dr. Ross, means fundamentally contributing to better clinical outcomes for patients.
Future of precision medicine
Mediclinic’s Shared Allied Services has various key areas under development from portable and wearable diagnostics, point-of-care testing to AI applications for supportive diagnostics purposes alongside digitisation of approaches from digital pathology to patient engagement and related care coordination
“We are very much focused on continually improving how we can harness the power of technology and data, and so, all our strategies are backed by this approach, not only with the goal of keeping people healthy but to also pioneer and evolve with new partnerships to identify and solve gaps in care. We aim to improve clinical outcomes alongside health and well-being,” Dr. Ross concluded.
This article appears in the latest issue of Omnia Health Magazine. Read the full issue online today.
