Burjeel Medical City and UK-based Digipharm Collaborate to Improve Access to Value-based Healthcare

To provide the best advanced health technologies and create an enhanced end-to-end patient experience, Burjeel Medical City (BMC), the flagship facility of Burjeel Holdings, and Digipharm, a UK-based innovative healthcare solutions provider, have joined hands to design and validate a new model for patient care in the UAE. The new platform, which has the potential to revolutionize the digital healthcare ecosystem, will focus initially on the Bone Marrow Transplantation program and will later expand to other specialties at the hospital.

According to the agreement, BMC and Digipharm, which has clients such as the UK National Health Service, will work closely together to implement digitally enabled Value-based Healthcare (VBHC) and Value-based Procurement (VBP) provisions. Mr. John Sunil, CEO of Burjeel Holdings, and Ahmed Abdulla, CEO of Digipharm, signed the MoU.

The partnership between BMC and Digipharm seeks to serve patients across the UAE with access to the most innovative health technologies that ensure optimized clinical pathways, and improved patient outcomes and experiences. As per the agreement, BMC will work with the company to lay the foundations to implement Digipharm’s ‘Reimburse’ Platform and the ‘Digihealth’ (patient reported outcomes) Application to enable VBHC and VBP at the hospital.

The multi-phase partnership will initially develop a framework to measure value by understanding the patient journey when the patient first steps into the hospital until the required treatment is provided, focusing on value-creation and the elimination of waste/poor outcomes. Accordingly, the collaboration will then explore real-time application of pre-agreed, personalized contract stipulations which are automatically executed when conditions are met.

“At Burjeel Holdings, we firmly believe that technology is a game-changer for advancing healthcare delivery. By leveraging cutting-edge technology, we aim to enhance the patient experience, improve outcomes and drive innovation in healthcare. We are excited to explore how the new technology can be used to improve Bone Marrow Transplant outcomes. Such collaborations will also bolster the UAE’s transformation journey into a global leader in healthcare,” said Mr. Sunil.

Established in 2022, BMC’s Bone Marrow Transplantation Program has completed 78 transplant procedures, including 30 in the pediatric population. The new system will help BMC identify the pain points a patient faces during the journey and estimate the associated cost at each step. It helps to design solutions around the care provided for the best outcomes and identify opportunities to reduce the cost of care provision. The platform will also enable remote patient experience feedback, reporting and patient reported outcome measurements collection through a dedicated application. The application hosts International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurements (ICHOM) Standard Sets and other established questionnaires that are widely used to inform healthcare commissioning and health technology assessments.

“We are proud to collaborate with one of the UAE’s largest private healthcare providers. Our platform will optimize the patient journey by identifying gaps and potential risks to deliver better outcomes. This collaboration will also allow us as a solution provider to validate our delivery models in host institutions and patient populations outside of the UK and Europe in a country that is leading digital transformation in the region,” said Mr. Abdulla.