A major forum that opened yesterday in Bahrain will draw up recommendations to revolutionise patient care and ensure a sustainable healthcare system on par with international standards.
Regulations on stem cell treatment and research as well as clinical trials and medical errors are among more than 20 presentations that will be discussed by Bahrain’s health regulators over three days at the second Health Regulatory Conference and Exhibition 2022.
The event at the Bahrain Conference Centre, Crowne Plaza Hotel, which gathered more than 800 participants at the opening, will feature an array of topics, with domestic and international healthcare practitioners, pharmaceutical experts, medical educators and accreditation specialists from the region exchanging their views.
“Regulators from the NHRA, who represent various departments and are drawn from different disciplines, will be happy to provide information and are keen to solicit views from the conference participants,” said National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA) chief executive Dr Maryam Al Jalahma.
“They will integrate the ideas into the NHRA’s development plans, which will form part of the framework of achieving our common goal to improve health and medical services in our beloved kingdom.”
Organised by the NHRA in collaboration with the BDA Centre for Conference and Exhibition, under the patronage of Supreme Council for Health chairman Lieutenant General Dr Shaikh Mohammed bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, the conference themed “safe and high-quality healthcare services” will also feature workshops and roundtable discussions.
“The forum covers a variety of topics including, but not limited to, granting and renewing accreditation to hospitals and medical centres, developing regulations and legislation, licensing healthcare facilities, launching the ‘Monshaat’ and ‘Mehan’ initiatives, regulating and arbitrating the use of medical devices and pharmaceuticals, among others,” noted Dr Al Jalahma.
Mehan and Monshaat are Bahrain’s healthcare licensing initiatives launched in December alongside a first-of-its-kind mobile phone app which allows inspectors to digitally record health breaches.
They are among the five new systems launched by NHRA to help facilities and professionals, respectively, with their licences and fee payments. The workshops will explain the operational aspects of these platforms to the participants with an aim to exchange knowledge as well as gather inputs.
At the opening of the forum, Health Minister Dr Jalila Al Sayyed highlighted the need for enriching the medical capabilities of the country, which she said, “plays a key role in boosting sustainability of the healthcare system”.
“Hosting such conferences and participating in them will facilitate knowledge exchange with experts and stakeholders from other nations, and in turn advance and broaden medical capabilities domestically,” said Dr Al Sayyed.
The other topics that will be discussed are the NHRA’s national accreditation project and its impact, trends in medical education, dental errors and patient safety, equal opportunities at the NHRA, standards of licensing allied professionals, pre-marital service provision, regulation of devices and medical laundry and the scope of alternative medicine in Bahrain with emphasis on homeopathy.
A meeting of the Gulf Committee of the GCC secretariat general will be held on the sidelines of the conference tomorrow, focusing on researching the systems for classifying and registering health specialties in GCC states.
raji@gdnmedia.bh
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