Top experts to address Second Middle East Conference on Healthcare Informatics in Dubai

The event is being organized by the United Arab Emirates University(UAEU) and Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh(RCSE) with the support of the Department of Health and Medical Services, Dubai (DOHMS), the World Health Organization(WHO), Ministry of Health, Dubai Healthcare City, University of Bath, Knowledge Village, Dubai Healthcare City, Higher Colleges of Technology(HCT), Zayed University(ZU), International Medical Informatics Association(IMIA), British Council, Harvard Medical School, Dubai Centre and British University in Dubai.

This year's conference will aim at addressing one of the biggest challenges facing the medical fraternity - incorporating state-of-the-art technology to efficiently provide world-class and affordable healthcare. The recommendations that were tabled at the hugely successful inaugural conference held last year were endorsed by the World Health Organization.
The opening day of the conference will discuss the modalities involved in the implementation and use of advanced technology in healthcare. The following day will focus and evaluate the socio-technical implications in healthcare informatics.

Prominent speakers from the Arab World, Europe and North America who have been put together for this conference will provide a unique opportunity for internationally renowned medical experts to brainstorm and explore the role of informatics in Healthcare and develop strategies for the implementation of best practices.

Commenting on the profile of the speakers His Excellency Dr. Hadef Bin Jouaan Al-Dhahiri, Vice Chancellor of UAE University said: "The eminent speakers who are drawn from a wide spectrum of health services and IT-enabled solutions will share their operational expertise and put on record their recommendations. We are confident that the synergy between prominent speakers and the crucial issues discussed at the conference will provide the ideal platform and background for evolving a concerted policy to tackle the challenges in healthcare. We believe this will go a long way in making a profound difference in the lives of the common people."

The speakers include Richard Granger, Director General, National Health Service IT, UK, Enrico Coiera, Professor and Foundation Chair in Medical Informatics, Centre for Health Informatics, University of New South Wales, Australia, Hiroshi Takeda Professor and Director, Department of Medical Information Science, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Dr. Najeeb M. A. Al-Shorbaji, Regional Advisor for Health Information Management and Telecommunications, John D. Halamka, Chief Information Officer of Harvard Medical School, Henry S. Thompson, Reader in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, Ahmad Risk, eHealth expert is the Head of Clinical Operations at Cross Medical Services and the editor of the respected Health Informatics Europe, Paul Whatling, NHS National Programme for IT in England.

Richard Granger who is the Director General, National Health Services IT, UK is responsible for IT contracts, IT solutions and installation and for providing the expertise to the NHS in project and programme management, IT and contract/commercial management.

Enrico Coiera, Professor and Foundation Chair in Medical Informatics, Centre for Health Informatics, University of New South Wales, Australia is a world leader in the field of Health Informatics. Having worked as a doctor, in industry and in academia, he has a unique perspective that delivers multi-disciplinary solutions to critical system problems in health care.

Hiroshi Takeda, Professor and Director, Department of Medical Information Science, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine has a professional and academic clinical background and was appointed as Associate Professor in the Dept. Medical Information Science to assist with the development of the hospital information system in Osaka University Hospital.

Dr. Najeeb M. A. Al-Shorbaji in his current capacity at the Regional Office, Dr. Al-Shorbaji is responsible for development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the Regional Programme on Health Information Management and Telecommunications in the areas of health informatics, medical librarianship, health and biomedical literature, medical records, telecommunications and telemedicine.

John D. Halamka, MD, MS is Chief Information Officer of Harvard Medical School, has authored three books on technology related issues and formed a software development firm, Ibis Research Labs, Inc.

Henry S. Thompson, Reader in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, has done extensive research on knowledge representation, natural language parsing, speech recognition, machine translation evaluation, modeling human lexical access mechanisms, the fine structure of human-human dialogue, language resource creation and architectures for linguistic annotation Ahmad Risk the Head of Clinical Operations at Cross Medical Services is also the editor of the respected Health Informatics Europe, an online journal on matters of European health informatics.

Dr Paul Whatling trained in medicine at the University of Wales in the UK and completed postgraduate specialist training in vascular and general surgery and was admitted to fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and joined the NHS National Programme for IT in England in 2003.