Microsoft and Ministry of Health come together as partners in e-Health initiative

This strategic partnership comes following an initial meeting earlier this year between Jean-Philippe Courtois, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and H E Dr Khalil Hassan. They discussed co-operation with the Ministry of Health aimed at providing the "best of breed" technology solutions to increase efficiency and enhance productivity through increased communication between patients, doctors, care takers and health centers.

During his first visit to Bahrain since he took over the role of Vice President of Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa, Emre Berkin said, "The creation of a Center of Excellence focusing on health issues with training and education for the region is highly important to the Government and people of Bahrain. Last year Microsoft supported the Ministry's Business Intelligence Initiative with far reaching results. To move onto a further cooperation agreement in the development of a Center of Excellence can only consolidate the Government's position as a key leader in the development of the region's IT industry."

Dr Khalil Hassan, Minister for Health, added, "Microsoft today has a Healthcare vertical division that ensures that the technologies we are deploying take into account the needs of this fast growing industry. The signing of the government agreement with Microsoft means that the Ministry of Health will be able to collaborate seamlessly without incurring additional integration costs to the Government and people of Bahrain."

The past year, Microsoft and the Ministry of Health, IT department, have worked closely together in areas such as Office productivity, e-mail system, intranet portal, and business intelligence. The IT developers at the Ministry went through intensive training in the latest development tools aimed at speeding up the provision of information and on-line services to all citizens.

"Microsoft plays a major role in the Ministry of Health initiative for enhancing efficiency and its drive to provide well-integrated and efficient e-health services to citizens. The investment in a strong technology backbone supporting all our business processes is now underway and we are now starting to seeing the benefit of the our investment with increased productivity, better collaboration, tighter integration and faster processing. The full IT team is fully trained on the latest net technologies and ready to support their internal customer as they move to the new Microsoft technologies." said Ahmed Al Hujeri, IT Director for Ministry of Health.

Samir Benmakhlouf, Business Development Manager for Microsoft Bahrain emphasized, "We are extremely pleased to be able to continue to support the efforts of the Ministry of Health in deploying state of the art technology. With extensive training of both users and IT professionals in the Ministry, we believe the Kingdom of Bahrain has a stronger technology backbone. Using open standards like XML and Web-services, the Ministry will be able to match patient's expectations in providing them with integrated e-health services and health information anywhere, anytime, and from any desktop or mobile device".