Photo has been used for illustrative purposes.

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

Two UAE-based entrepreneurial brothers have pivoted telemedicine or telehealth into a new concept of hospitalization and healthcare delivery system.

Dr Nawab Shafi Ul Mulk and Dr. Nawab Shaji Ul Mulk, president and chairman respectively of the Mulk Healthcare headquartered in Dubai, virtually announced the new concept known as “e-hospital” before 55 Gulf- and South Asia-based journalists and 14 healthcare providers on Monday afternoon.

Gulf Today raised the question on how the Mulk E-Hospital is different from all the existing telehealth platforms initiated by various public and private health facilities across the country.

Saying that the E-Hospital bears the traditional hospital setting, Shafi added: “It brings all hospitals, clinics, doctors, insurers and pharmacies in your fingertips through a (Google downloadable) software application (available this August). You could be sitting in Dubai and getting expert medical opinion from a specialist in Bangkok without traveling to Bangkok and get opinion, based on the tests and diagnosis in the UAE.” “The patients (wherever they are) will have the choice to select (whoever they want to consult with),” he also said.

So far, over 1,700 physicians of various specialities including psychiatrists and psychologists from the US, UK, India and Turkey, including at least 300 of their fraternity in the UAE have signed up for their expertise to anyone-whether insurance or out-of-pocket paying patient-anywhere in the world. At least 150 health facilities in the UAE have joined. The entire virtual ecosystem have pharmacies enlisted as well for the delivery of generic or branded medications and a unique device for the monitoring of the patient’s vital signs namely blood pressure, body temperature, and oxygen and glucose levels.

All services have been targeted to be available this mid-August, including all requirements of medical tourism patients and their kin.

The Mulk brothers are open to the mobile clinic system to be incorporated in the future.

Shafi is a radiologist from India who pioneered teleradiology in the Middle East and North Africa through his Global Hawk Telemedicine established in Dubai in 2008. Three years thereafter or in 2011, he expanded the medical enterprise to become the Global Hawk Imaging and Diagnostics.

Followed through for the reason of the new concept carried out through videoconferencing-to also ensure that children-patients are with their parents or any older family member while on consultation, Shafi said: “This is the need of the time and the future of healthcare. COVID19 pandemic has necessitated less human interaction. We are breaking down barriers so that even the common person would have access to healthcare.”