Department of Health, Abu Dhabi - Innovative Management in Health Care Industries
Company: Department of Health, Abu Dhabi
Company Description: Department of health of Abu Dhabi is the regulator and overall responsible organization for healthcare and life science in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. it has two main entities under one chairman, the department of health and the abu dhabi public health center. the organization ensure the care provided for its 3 million population is of the highest caliber and drive the overall healthcare strategy.
Nomination Category: Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Award for Innovative Management in Health Care Industries - Organizations with 100 or More Employees
Nomination Title: Alliance to Fight COVID-19
Abu Dhabi Department of Health innovative integrated approach of research and innovation to improve quality of care and fight COVID-19 pandemic
For several years already Abu Dhabi Department of Health (DoH) has chosen a unique approach to look at and benefit from medical research and HealthTech innovation. In DoH organizational chart all activities in research and innovation are part of DoH Healthcare Quality Division reporting to the same executive director. The idea behind is that focus of medical research and innovation activities is to close gaps and contribute to quality of healthcare in Abu Dhabi.
In particular in the field of health technology innovation provided by startups and SME, DoH has chosen a very proactive approach, created a HealthTechHub and dedicated a team to work with startups outside government offices in Abu Dhabi’s innovation hub, HUB71 (http://www.hub71.com ). Focus of the dedicated DoH HealthTech team is to support innovators to develop their preliminary products and services to test them in the market (“incubation”), but also to attract international startups to implement their solutions in Abu Dhabi. Part of this work is DoH MENA HealthTech Accelerator in a public-private-partnership with PlugAndPlay, the largest startups accelerator all over the world (http://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/).
All efforts and preparation done before prove to be very beneficial in 2020 when COVID-19 outbreak reached Abu Dhabi.
Under its leadership, DoH launched a COVID-19 IRB Ethics Committee which has approved almost 300 COVID-19 research projects in Abu Dhabi in 2020, among them two big COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials. Results of these researches significantly helped to shape Abu Dhabi’s response to the pandemic.
In parallel Department of Health and PlugAndPlay launched the “Alliance to Fight COVID-19” (AFC-19) in Abu Dhabi in May 2020 (https://wam.ae/en/details/1395302841176 ) being joined by strong partners like Daman National Health Insurance, Ma’an, Abu Dhabi’s Social Contribution Authority, seven healthcare providers, Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre, but also Etihad Airways, Abu Dhabi’s National Airline.
More than 150 potentially valuable startups and their solutions were screened by DoH HealthTech and PlugAndPlay teams and the most promising of them implemented across the health sector but also by Etihad Airways to ensure safe travelling.
All efforts in research and innovation and research and DoH unique approach have significantly supported the management of COVID-19 outbreak and contributed to a relatively low number of infected and in particular death cases.