NewsDetail
Doha, November 14, 2011: Qatar’s steps to build an Academic Health System (AHS) have gained international prominence with Hamad Medical Corporation’s Managing Director, Dr Hanan al Kuwari PhD delivering a speech at a major Academic Medical Centres conference in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
In her address to the gathering of international healthcare experts focused on strategy and governance issues, Dr Hanan outlined the steps being taken by Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) and their partners to bring the very best of international health care practices to Qatar through the establishment of an AHS.
Dr. Hanan told delegates about the specific healthcare challenges faced by Qatar in the coming decades and how the implementation of the world’s first national AHS program would benefit the rapidly growing nation.
“Our overall challenge is to transition from a health system that treats acute patients, to being one that predicts and prevents ill health, particularly for chronic and lifestyle diseases, with high quality acute and specialist care for those patients that need it,” Dr. Hanan told delegates.
“Our Academic Health System is being developed in partnership across a number of key health, education and research organizations in Qatar and in collaboration with a number of international centres of excellence. Together we are greater than the sum of our parts.”
HMC and its partners – WCMC-Q, University of Calgary Qatar (UCQ), Primary Health Care (PHC), Qatar University (QU), Sidra Medical and Research Center and College of the North Atlantic -Qatar (CNAQ) – have pledged their commitment to further developing high quality patient care and a healthy population in Qatar through academic excellence, pioneering research and innovative community engagement.
“The AHS we are developing in Qatar will be one that specifically targets and addresses the nation’s unique healthcare needs and challenges and we will assess progress against key performance indicators,” Dr. Hanan said.
Academic Health Systems (AHS) are partnerships between leading learning and research institutions and healthcare providers. They are recognized internationally as a model for pioneering research and medical discoveries and for making them available to patients. They are synonymous around the world with academic excellence, the delivery of the highest quality patient care and overall health improvement. The Qatar AHS is the first of its kind in the region.
Dr Hanan told the delegates, many of whom are world leaders in the development and implementation of Academic Health Systems, that research will focus on six areas of priority for Qatar – metabolic diseases, cardiovascular health, genetics, neuroscience, cancer and infectious diseases.
In Qatar, we have the resources and ambition to make rapid advances, but few health and research organizations have sought to make transformational change into an Academic Health System in such a short timeframe.
