RIYADH, 21 January 2003 — The King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center (KFSH) in Riyadh will organize an e-health symposium in Dubai from Jan. 26 to 29, according to Dr. Fahad S. Al-Orifi, director of e-health center, health outreach & business affairs at KFSH. The symposium at the Dubai International Exhibition Center will coincide with the Arab Health Congress 2003 and is being organized with the support of the UAE Ministry of Health.
Hamad Abdulrahman Al-Midfa’a, UAE’s minister of health, will open the symposium. A number of specialists from Saudi hospitals will participate in the symposium which will feature 50 international speakers, including France’s Dr. Luc Montagnier who discovered the virus that causes AIDS.
Dr. Al-Orifi, the chairman of the organizing committee, said that six separate sessions would be held. These include an e-health symposium, advances in minimally invasive surgery and robotics, diseases of New World Economies (obesity, nutrition and diabetes), health management, infectious diseases, the Middle East imaging and diagnostic conference.
“We selected these topics based on the needs of the region,” the chairman pointed out. He said a novel feature of the symposium is that it will allow participants to design, with the help of KFSH, a country-specific e-health program. The agency in charge of implementing the program will be the hospital’s eHealth Center, Health Outreach and Business affairs department.
Through its Outreach program, KFSH has already launched a national telemedicine network linking five hospitals in the Kingdom. Through the network doctors from five major hospitals benefit in terms of teleconsultation, expert medical opinion and tele-echo that allow cardiac cases to be diagnosed from a distance.
Dr. Al-Orifi said that the hospital had been recognized by the WHO as a regional adviser for telemedicine in the Gulf. The symposium, he pointed out, will also look at advances in robotic surgery to make operations minimally invasive.
There will also be a live demonstration of robotic surgery in Cairo for the benefit of the symposium in Dubai.
A speaker from Cleveland Clinic in Ohio will also give a presentation on minimally invasive surgery for valve replacement.
Under the theme of “Diseases of New World Economies”, the speakers address such topics as obesity, nutrition and diabetes.
As Dr. Al-Orifi and media affairs executive Hamoud Al-Otaibi pointed out, an estimated 13 percent of the Saudi population suffers from diabetes while another 12 percent is potentially at risk of the disease.
The experts will discuss the dietary aspects for the management of diabetes, he added.
