The Deputy Minister for Public Health, Dr. Ziad Memish, has affirmed the success of the first stage of applying Health Electronic Surveillance Network (HESN Program) in Makkah, pointing out that the Program is to be circulated all over the Kingdom within 3 to 5 years.
During his opening for the events of the special meeting of discussing HESN Program, with the public health assistants for health affairs and HESN coordinators in the Kingdom's regions and provinces, which was held at the MOH Headquarters on Saturday, Dr. Ziad added that applying the Program helped work team find out some loopholes in the work mechanism. This in turn pushed the Minister of Health (MOH) to perform another strategy depending on familiarizing with every region's potentialities; in order to avoid a lot of obstacles and problems that could occur in the future; especially with regard to the link and need mechanism appropriate for the number of those concerned with entering data and the number of health centers and hospitals, which will be in charge of submitting the patients' information for the health sectors, which in turn are to save these information to easily refer to them.
Dr. Memish said, “Linking the Kingdom to HESN program needs some time due to the Kingdom's large area and its diverging peripherals, as we are to work on overcoming that through practical and scientific way. He went on pointing out that the experiment of the first stage which was applied showed a lot of deficiencies which through the meeting we seek to review and consider to the effect that we manage to overcome when applying in other regions. Also, this is in order to make matters clear to the Ministry of Health (MOH), especially with regard to the needs and budgets for these areas, and all what is related to conveying information via the electronic system, together with continuing training in HESN.”
Meanwhile, the Deputy Minister for Public Health underscored the importance of depending on modern and electronic technologies in terms of dealing and corresponding between the health sectors and Ministry of Health rather than depending fax machines. This is especially with regard to disease reports and important correspondences which necessitates delivering them to leaderships in the Ministry of Health as soon as possible; namely when having change in some epidemic, or emergence of specific cases in any of all the Kingdom's regions.
It is worth mentioning that the aim of HESN is to advance the public health, as it works on reducing paperwork and providing more precise measures for work. This in turn raises the level of the employees' health and medical information and increases their practical and personal skills, as this Program is distinguished with resilience; to cope with the health care requirements which differ according to the geographical area. Therefore, the Program is to be carried out in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to cope with the requirements of each region according to its traits and its needs.
Currently, HESN contains several units such as communicable and epidemiological diseases finding, epidemiological diseases outbreak, vaccinations and inoculations, inoculation and vaccine materials stockpile, organizing work and managing it, reporting, and public health reports; given that new units are to be added in the future.
The importance of HESN Program lies in unifying the health processes, models, and reports in the Kingdom as a whole electronically. This in turn is to increase the preciseness of information and reduce differences with regard to recording it between regions and the MOH's facilities. Thus, the way through which the dealings are performed in a lot of the MOH's facilities are non-automatic or partially automatic, and obtaining health information and statistics through paperwork causes a lot of mistakes, in addition that its reviewing requires more effort. This in turn complicates and delays the process of retrieving information and verifying of it; and by applying HESN all these obstacles will be avoided.