Patient Experience

Technology has the ability to impact human lives in all possible ways. This single domain has had a major impact and is able to touch people’s lives in all aspects and on different scales. In addition, technology offers a wide range of career options like data science, Machine Learning and AI, software engineering, cybersecurity, and many others.

Although technology provides this freedom and ability to transform thoughts into practically working products, it requires a high level of commitment to learn and to be up-to-date with the latest technologies trends, and rapid changes. And since we live in a rapidly evolving world, that has high living standards, and a competitive market, innovation is necessary in the technology field to adapt and overcome the challenges of change.

Transforming the Healthcare Sector

In recent times, the healthcare sector has been the one to look to technology to overcome unprecedented barriers. During the past few years, the delivery of healthcare services has undergone dramatic changes. From physical appointments with physicians in regular clinics, it had to come up with more advanced delivery methods like virtual appointments, remote health monitoring, surgery live streaming supported by assistive systems, and disease diagnostic and prediction tools using AI.

This has made healthcare leaders take a notice of the beneficial implications and that they need to get a solid understanding of emerging technological trends that can benefit the industry, by being familiar with expected benefits, challenges, and risks, and seriously start thinking about how to apply them to potential future improvement areas within the model of care and boosting the optimal use. Leaders and nations together can help achieve the goals of transformation of the healthcare industry.

As a major influencer in the global economy, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has made a remarkable move to embrace innovation, technology, and digital transformation across sectors, in alignment with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 for a modern and innovative nation. Kingdom’s Vision 2030 and the related National Transformation Programs set ambitious goals to leverage technology and embrace digitization to enhance the efficiency, quality, and accessibility of government services. The progress achieved so far in this field has the international recognition. Bringing in her expertise in technology and digital transformation domain in governmental and private sectors is Eng. Layla Alsalehi who holds the position of “Director of Virtual Healthcare Services Activation Department” in Seha Virtual Hospital SVH under KSA Ministry of Health.

Considering the rapid changes and global economic demands, Layla believes that in the near future, emerging technologies will focus more on preventing diseases within the community rather than providing healthcare treatment at late stages where the survival rate is at a minimum and cost at a high level. In addition, emerging technologies will

continue to improve quality, augment performance, and increase accessibility and affordability of healthcare services.

Leveraging Technology

Layla considers herself lucky to be able to work in a multidisciplinary environment, led by an inspiring and supportive leadership team that encourages innovation and provides all possible empowerment and trust to young leaders to be able to reflect their innovative ideas, expertise, and pursue the revolutionary transformative mission toward achieving more modern and healthy nation.

She believes that empowering the integration between cutting-edge technologies and existing systems; with extensive support from all involved governmental parties and investors, is crucial at early stages in order to support the interoperability and the development of the next generation of healthcare systems. In this domain, the KSA Council of Health Insurance (CHI) and the National Center for Health Information (NHIC) launched the National Platform for Health and Insurance Exchange Services (NPHIES). This innovative national program aims to increase efficiency and accuracy for healthcare providers and insurance companies and provide more transparency regarding patient information and healthcare transactions associated with it. NPHIES is designed to be secured and to comply with international healthcare interoperability standards.

Speaking about emerging technologies in the healthcare sector, Layla emphasizes that regulation is a crucial topic and is always on top of future digital health trends. The KSA government takes emerging technologies’ opportunities and threats very seriously and is moving forward to regulate the practices of implementation in healthcare through collaboration among multiple entities. “Regulation will allow practitioners to learn how to apply and use cutting-edge technologies, and make the most use of them in safe clinical settings and minimize any expected risk. Moreover, the technical guidelines that target developers and engineers will assist them during the process of designing, developing, and testing cutting-edge technologies, and eventually leading to official marketing authorization and approvals,” says Layla.

Trends in Healthcare

Talking specifically about top trends in the healthcare sector, Layla observes that big data processing, Machine Learning, and Artificial intelligence AI development will continue in the next 5 -10 years with more focus on improving the accuracy of disease diagnosis and prediction. Although the accuracy of AI algorithms has significantly improved during the past few years, AI applications are still used as supplementary tools rather than primary diagnostic sources i.e. it has been used for preliminary diagnostics level, to confirm existing diagnoses, or to enrich research databases. Healthcare providers are still concerned about AI accuracy, and healthcare facilities that decided to use AI do all possible and proper procedures to mitigate the negative outcomes or consequences while making use of this trend.

In reference to her current experience in the Virtual Healthcare domain, AI algorithms are used heavily to augment Virtual Healthcare Services, specifically in the medical imaging field (CT Brain and Chest X-ray) where AI capabilities improve radiologists’ productivity

by providing diagnosis-supporting tools lead to fast diagnosis, report generation, and consequently better patient outcomes.

And in order to get the full potential of AI capabilities, in the near future, Layla feels that the focus and investment will be more on designing and building user-friendly APIs to smoothly integrate AI applications into existing advanced healthcare systems with minimum complexity. This will facilitate communication and data exchange between healthcare systems and AI applications/components, and achieve the full benefits of AI applications without causing any impact or disruption to the existing legacy systems or infrastructure.

Another, most significant trend that has been the saving lifeline for the healthcare sector during the COVID-19 pandemic is Telehealth. Telehealth became standard practice after the global recognition and adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Layla thinks the revolutionary utilization of this technology will continue in the future.

In this domain, the KSA Ministry of Health MOH has launched a number of initiatives and programs associated with Vision 2030 Health Sector Transformation Program level 3 objectives which are:

· Facilitate access to Health Services,

· Strengthen prevention against health risks, and

· Improve quality and efficiency of services.

The Tele-Health program was launched in Nov. 2020 during the pandemic, aiming to reduce patients’ visits to healthcare facilities for non-emergency cases, stop the spread of infections, as well as improve patient satisfaction by saving time and effort required to obtain health services. It provides Virtual Clinics (VC) and Immediate Virtual Consultations (IVC) through integrated National platforms (Ecosystems). The number of Tele-health (VC & IVC) program beneficiaries since the early launching of the program reached 2.9 Million patients, and the percentage of healthcare facilities using the program reached 81%.

The Virtual Hospital

Seha Virtual Hospital (SVH) is a Saudi national specialized hospital associated with KSA MOH healthcare facilities. It provides specialized healthcare services by applying innovative technologies at the right time and ensuring the quality of the provided services. The SVH was launched officially in Feb. 2022 and is considered the largest of its kind in terms of the number of connected hospitals, and the first in the Middle East. The Virtual Hospital aims to achieve better health outcomes by providing easy access to specialized care in a timely manner, enhancing expertise among practitioners, and reducing costs of care with assurance of the quality of the provided services.

The Virtual Hospital today provides 29 specialties, and 73 subspecialties, connected to 170 Hospitals, and the number of beneficiaries reached 127k patients. The Virtual Hospital provides five categories of services:

· Multidisciplinary Virtual Committees, include: Cardiac board and Tumor board.

· Specialized Virtual Clinics.

· Allied Health Services, including Tele-Radiology.

· Acute Care Virtual Consultation, includes: Tele-ICU video consultation, Tele-Stroke, and Tele-EEG.

· Home-based care includes Remote Monitoring for Heart Failure Patients.

Telehealth and Virtual Health deliver services , improve outcomes and have many advantages, but they also face some barriers, such as patients’ reluctance to adopt them.

Therefore, patient satisfaction and needs should guide the development and implementation of these innovations. “I think the future of Tele-Health will focus on having a more comprehensive and integrated patient experience which provide seamless and integrated journey allow patients to navigate all their information through user friendly interfaces empowered by advanced video/audio communication, remote monitoring devices, web-chat, documents sharing capabilities, reminders and follow-up features, and real time updates.

Moreover, the future of Telehealth will maximize the benefits for the patients through systems interoperability. Interoperability will provide critical insights generated by data sharing and interpretation among Healthcare and Telehealth ecosystems which involve remote patient monitoring and wellness applications,” says Layla.

She also says that the development and adoption of Telehealth and Virtual Health depend on the availability and quality of technical infrastructure, such as 5G networks and advanced technologies. So, advanced infrastructure technologies and implementation will be on the top of future digital health trends.

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), which connects medical devices and applications over the Internet, is a promising trend that can enhance healthcare delivery and outcomes by enabling real-time data access, remote monitoring, and reduced hospitalization.

Driving Innovation as a Leader

Layla believes that innovation leaders should constantly look for opportunities to improve processes or overcome existing challenges. They should lead the transformative vision or innovation with a great sense of passion. Leaders who believe and are passionate about an innovative vision can inspire their team and sustain their momentum by constantly reinforcing innovation. Moreover, they should always foster a positive work environment with consistent, and transparent communication strategy. Since innovation comes with risks, innovation leaders should have strong risk management skills and encourage their team to take risks with proper mitigation plans.

“Moreover, Innovation leaders should proactively ask for new ideas and feedback from their team. They should be able to find ways to obtain the most creative thinking and outstanding outcomes from them. i.e. they should be open-minded, and open doors for any new ideas, opinions, and different perspectives. In addition, innovation leaders should be always keen about the team capability building, push them to pursue new knowledge and gain new skills,” says Layla.

Another crucial factor to being a leader is to stay updated and ahead with the latest in the industry. As the saying goes “the only constant in life is change”, meaning; the strategies that worked well a few months ago might be less effective today. Thus, in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, it is important than ever before to update our knowledge and

skills to stay relevant, and competitive in the market, and to unlock new opportunities for success. And for her personally, when it comes to embracing continuous learning, Layla finds digital resources very effective! Starting with online courses, and webinars, and ending with social media. She also finds it very effective to connect with others from all over the world, learning from their previous experience and sharing knowledge and expertise in different contexts.

Awards and Accolades

Layla proudly shares one of the remarkable awards that the KSA Ministry of Health MOH, represented by SVH received during Digital Government Forum 2022, which is the “Digital Government Award” for the best use of emerging technologies in the field of digital transformation. It was a recognition of the Virtual Hospital for the adoption and implementation of emerging technologies in Virtual Healthcare Services. Layla was honored to contribute to this achievement by leading the implementation of Virtual Healthcare Services in SVH using emerging technologies; starting from early assessment and evaluation phases with medical and technical teams, and ending with successful launching and activation.

In March 2023, the Seha Virtual Hospital (SVH) obtained the Canadian International Accreditation Certificate (Diamond Level), as the first Virtual Hospital to obtain this accreditation.

Words of Encouragement

Layla concludes our interaction by sharing the following advice for fellow and young leaders who are encountering obstacles in their digital transformation journeys:

“First of all, I think due to the rapidly evolving domain, digital threats, and opportunities, young leaders should ensure that they gain a set of essential skills and knowledge. They should learn how to foster agility, adapt to new technologies, and read more about market trends.

Moreover, young leaders should improve their ability to embrace new innovative ideas and adapt to them effectively. Second, when it comes to planning, young leaders should not overwhelm their heads and their teams with holistic long-term digital transformation plans. They can start by setting short-term goals, and divide huge programs into phases with achievable goals within a reasonable timeframe. It is essential also for new leaders, who drive digital transformation, to determine priority, and identify where, how, and when the innovative idea can be applied to maximize the benefits out of it.”

Quote: “As the director, I oversee the implementation and improvement of virtual health care services using cutting-edge technology and best practices.”

Quote: “Due to the expected global increase in chronic diseases, there will be a need for more advanced sophisticated smart devices and sensor technologies associated with cost-effective disease management and analytical software.”

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A Quote to Live By:

One of my favorite quotes that I follow is “Work hard in silence, let your success be the noise”

This quote inspires us to build a strong sense of confidence and independence, focusing on work rather than being distracted by validation or approval from others. I believe that if you are in the right direction, following the right path meant for you, nothing can stop you or come as a barrier between you and your success.