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I'm here with Dr. Gregory Dorn, President and CEO of First Databank. Dr. Gregory, what
are you discussing this year at the World Health Care Congress Middle East? We’ve
been here talking about clinical decision support, so the opportunity to influence clinical
decisions that doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are making for patients in hospitals.
Why is an event like this so important? There are probably a couple of reasons why we come
to an event like this, one is we need to meet our current customers, they are here. Their
partners are here also that we work with and also obviously there are potential new customers.
We also want to get our message out; we want to educate the audience about the opportunity
to improve the quality of care patients receive. And the fact that you can make decisions a
bit safer for patients in hospitals and medical groups.
What are some of the challenges your organization is facing in the healthcare industry? Particularly
in this market, one is we require the deployment of electronic medical record systems and pharmacy
systems for our decision support to help change practice and how decisions are made by pharmacists
and that is a challenge, so we look for those systems to be implemented. The other thing
is that we have to localize or make the decision support that is used by pharmacists, nurses,
and physicians in hospitals, medical groups, and pharmacies localize it to what the region
preferences are. There are different medications here than there are in the U.K. or in the
U.S., different availabilities of technology, so we have to customize all of our decision
support to be locally relevant, and that is another challenge.
So this is what is unique about integrating these systems in the Middle East. How big
of an issue is medication errors? Medication errors are a very big global issue. They are
one of the number one causes of in hospital complications and morbidity so if you think
about just going into a hospital and getting treated, there is a range of opportunities
there that a clinician can make a mistake and there are a lot of studies that show that
the number of medication errors have a significant impact on how patients do in the hospital.
We know here, in the GCC conference, there is a very high frequency of prescribing so
many patients get lots of medications and we know that there are lots of interactions
but none of those are being looked at or being optimized right now. We think there is a huge
opportunity to reduce the complications that are secondary to heavy prescription rates
in the region. How can these complications be reduced? The
main way is, if I am a clinician and I am seeing you perhaps in the medical group or
in the hospital and I make a decision to prescribe a medication where you might have a particular
diagnosis, at that point that I am prescribing that medication I can rely on my knowledge,
my education, and my training to help make that choice or I can rely on that plus an
integrated decision support system that will tell me. That will guide me that will say
you might be thinking for Shadia you should give a beta blocker but because of this database,
I might give you a slightly different medication that I wouldn’t have thought of without
that decision support. That’s how we think we can make a difference.
What are some of the innovations your organization brings to healthcare? When we think of innovation,
we think of how we can change the process of care. Are there ways that we can provide
better cuing or introducing messages into the practice of the clinician so alerting,
dose changes. There is a range that we can do that type of innovation and we are working
on it right now. What do you hope to learn or teach from such
an event? We’ve learned so far the opportunity is significant to make a difference from patients
in the GCC countries and we are excited about that. We also want people to understand that
the types of best practices that have been deployed around the world can be brought here
and can be implemented here. There is a portability to best practices that can benefit all of
the populations of the GCC countries. We were speaking to other guests and they
were saying that best practices are fantastic but they often don’t work because they need
to be customized and what not, so you agree? I agree, I think there are local population
nuances here. There is different disease prevalences that you have to customize your best practices
so if you say I am bringing a panoply of best practices, there may be some that are not
relevant here because the same diseases are not prevalent. Also, there may be differences
in what is available technologically to treat patients. If I have a best practice that says
use a particular medication or a particular technology that best practice is not very
helpful if that medication or that technology is not available in the venue where I bring
that best practice into.