World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) has positively influenced Qatar’s healthcare sector in important areas such as services, education and creation of awareness, says a senior official.
Through initiatives such as the model smart clinic for diabetes at Al Wakra, training medical and nursing students on safe patient care and extensive initiatives to create awareness and eliminate the stigma around conditions such as mental health problems and dementia, WISH has been able to impact on the country’s health policy and practice, said Egbert Schillings (pictured), CEO, WISH.
“The idea behind WISH was to identify the best ideas in health care policy along with some of the pressing challenges globally and locally. The purpose was to benefit populations all around the world but also benefit Qatar,” Schillings told The Peninsula.
“What we had been able to do locally is to transfer many ideas into practice and introduce new concepts. The Al Wakra clinic is a change in the delivery model. Patient safety is getting young people, future leaders of health care to embrace new concepts that are going to make change in patient safety and the third one is engaging with the public and creating awareness,” he said.
WISH, an initiative of Qatar Foundation (QF) since 2013, is a global healthcare community dedicated to capturing and disseminating the best evidence-based ideas and practices.
As a result of WISH 2013’s report on accountable care, a smart clinic for diabetes care opened as a pilot programme at Al Wakra Health Centre, which offers integrated care through a specialised team that includes a physician, nurse, health educator and dietitian. Until March this year, 1,000 people were screened for diabetes, 123 were identified as pre-diabetic, and 20 were diagnosed with diabetes.
Patient care education was introduced for medical and nursing students for the first time in Qatar this year as result of a recommendation made at WISH 2015. The first edition of WISH’s global Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety educated around 100 Qatar-based faculty and health science students.
Also, WISH facilitated four Doha-based journalists to participate in the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism (RCJF), a programme brought to Qatar through a partnership between WISH and The Carter Center, collaborated on a program designed to evaluate the increasing effects and growing challenges of dementia on society in Qatar.
The WISH 2016 Summit in November will feature nine research papers that highlight and address some of the world’s most pressing healthcare challenges, including Healthy Populations, Precision Medicine, Investing in Health, Accountable Care, Cardiovascular Disease, Autism, Behavioral Insights, Genomics in the Gulf Region and Islamic Ethics, and Healthcare Workforce.
Internationally-renowned experts will chair the discussions. For the first time, WISH will also report on its impact, locally and globally, on issues previously highlighted at the conference, such as diabetes and patient safety.
The summit will provide a platform to show case how the Qatar Genome Program has progressed, present a report on precision medicine and a panel to discuss on Genomics in the Gulf Region and Islamic Ethics.
Further, globally WISH has been able to influence policy makers of several countries in health care through presenting its research findings and recommendations.
“The international impact is that we are creating a space for people to see that Qatar has an important story to share in international healthcare policy,” said Schillings.
