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Sidra backs innovation to enhance patient care

Published: 12 Nov 2017 - 07:59 am | Last Updated: 28 Dec 2021 - 05:44 pm
Sofia Ferreira and Paula Ibanez explaining about their innovation ‘10 moons -Âshr Aqmar’ which is now a Sidra Medicine smartphone app for pregnant women in Qatar. Pic: Salim Matramkot / The Peninsula

Sofia Ferreira and Paula Ibanez explaining about their innovation ‘10 moons -Âshr Aqmar’ which is now a Sidra Medicine smartphone app for pregnant women in Qatar. Pic: Salim Matramkot / The Peninsula

Fazeena Saleem | The Peninsula 

Sidra Medicine through its Project Imagine programme encourages innovation at all levels within the organisation. It is a project where great ideas are turned into reality for the benefit of patients, staff and the community. 

Project Imagine is based on the concept of crowd sourcing innovation ideas that can lead to efficiencies in work processes or patient care services. 

“Project Imagine is really important for us, because we are passionate about providing the best patient care and services not only for today but also for tomorrow. This process is really about finding practical ways of bringing about best healthcare practices, processes and products,” Peter Morris, Sidra Chief Executive Officer, Sidra Medicine told The Peninsula. 

We see a huge amount of in-house talent coming together and an energy to try new things to improve our services for our patients and improve efficiencies in using our resources. In many ways, Project Imagine is also about inspiring our amazing staff to think about how we can create tomorrow today,” he said. 

Morris also said that building on the success of Project Imagine, at least three Pitch days will be held per year to pave the way to encourage and implement more innovative ideas into practice. 

In Project Imagine, ideas are generated by Sidra staff and a five member Innovation Review Council (IRC) determines the finalists, culminating in a Sidra wide pitch day. Finalists pitch their ideas to staff who are at the event or watching via live stream.

Attendees and live stream viewers, vote for the idea they liked best or found to be the most useful. The brain child of Dr. Deepak Kaura, the Chair of Foundation Services at Sidra, it is the first of its kind in the country.

“The journey to making Project Imagine a reality has been one filled with wonderment. I have been thinking about launching this for nearly seven years and to see it come to life at Sidra Medicine is truly a dream come true. It represents the culmination of so many years of imagination, strategy and expert execution including developing the region’s only hospital based in-house team - the Center for Medical Innovation, Software, and Technology (CMIST),” said Dr. Deepak. 

Sidra Medicine, recently held a pitch day featuring five staff members who presented their ideas ranging from apps to virtual reality concepts in the hope of securing votes and eventually the technical support and resources to bring the idea to life.

A solution that allows families to review the pediatric emergency wait times across Sidra Medicine and Hamad Medical Corporation, was one such idea presented on pitch day. It gained the highest number of votes. The winning pitch was developed by a multidisciplinary team of experts led by Dr Robert Hoffman, from the Department of Emergency Medicine. 

After pitch day, CMIST works on developing the applications and assess the ease at which they can be prototyped, iterated and released as well as the resources required to bring them to fruition. Other stakeholders who play a key role in the review and roll-out of the apps include teams from IT, process improvement and executive management, legal, administration and as well as the clinical departments, says Dr Avez Rizvi, Division Chief of CMIST at Sidra Medicine. 

Three ideas have already been implemented at Sidra Medicine as a result of Project Imagine. 

Sidra Stream, which was used at the pitch day, is used to live-stream meetings and planning sessions across the organization. It was in use during the pitch day to allow those who weren’t able to join to join in and remotely vote for their favourite idea.

Headed by Saleh Al Marri, it is being used to share immediate key outcomes from important team meetings and events. 10 moons -Âshr Aqmar in Arabic, which refers to the length of the pregnancy using the lunar calendar- is a Sidra Medicine smartphone app for pregnant women in Qatar. It is currently in the final stages.

The idea came from Sofia Ferreira (Mechanical Engineer) and Paula Ibanez (Nurse and Midwife), where they felt it was a need to empower women in Qatar and connect maternity services with users. The App is based on a family centered care model, following the journey of mothers through their pregnancy. It provides education, individualised plans of care, nutrition advise and ultrasound scans of the baby.  

The main objective of 10 Moons is to increase patient knowledge in order to achieve a positive pregnancy experience. It will change the approach towards antenatal care and will facilitate communication between mothers-to-be and Sidra. It will allow women and families to become active partners of their care, says Sofia and Paula.  

Another app which has already proven immensely successful is Saffara, which means whistle in Arabic. It is an application that stemmed from an idea pitched by Dr. Ben Lee, a neonatology physician and the Associate Chief Medical Officer at Sidra.