Medical errors are often too common due to the lack of timely and quality health data. As a consequence, patients routinely suffer from duplicate therapy, drug overutilization and improper procedures. Aggregating and analyzing this data at a national level will help promote improved patient safety and a reduction in avoidable medical errors.

This benefit is especially true for medication related errors, which have been shown in international research (e.g. Singapore and Australia) to represent between 50%-70% of savings created by national E-Health programs. The main reason is that avoiding adverse drug events directly results in a fewer number of patients being admitted or readmitted to hospitals.

A high priority is therefore the establishment of a national medication record for each individual. Also known as an “all drugs, all people” solution, this capability allows for drug interaction checking for prescribed medication against the patient’s existing drug regimen. When a patient presents at a health care institution, a medication profile can be obtained to provide insights into the patient’s health status. Over the counter and out of country drugs taken by the patient can also be collected by the solution to further reduce the number of adverse events.

A national person registry for health provides a reliable cross reference and helps ensure that all patient records are properly linked. Having a national personal identifier helps greatly this task and fortunately that is already available in Qatar.

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