Saudi Arabia forges ahead with health service digital transformation on back of COVID-19 pandemic

Saudi Arabia forges ahead with health service digital transformation on back of COVID-19 pandemic

RIYADH: The coronavirus pandemic has inadvertently provided the springboard to spur on the digital transformation of Saudi Arabia’s public healthcare sector. The strain placed on the Kingdom’s health services by the COVID-19 outbreak highlighted the need for more robust apps, such as booking platforms for vaccinations and remote access to patient records. As a result, the Saudi Ministry of Health has been forging ahead with the introduction of multi-cloud solutions, built on VMware Cloud Foundation, to boost provision to the country’s growing population of more than 35 million people. The ministry can now offer secure, cloud-based services to a range of public healthcare providers including hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies, significantly boosting their efficiency, and enabling them to grow and innovate. Health officials have simplified the ministry’s information technology infrastructure by deploying VMware Cloud Foundation as the unifying platform for its cloud environment, spreading workloads across the clouds of service providers including STC and Mobily. Ministry information security general director, Khalid Al-Medbel, said: “The Ministry of Health seeks to achieve the highest levels of excellence in healthcare in line with the aims of Saudi Vision 2030. This means having the best multi-cloud foundation to optimize operations, raise efficiency, and drive innovation