ABSTRACT

As part of a national 5-year annual strategic plan that began in 1976, the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Oman has instituted several initiatives to facilitate the delivery of efficient and effective healthcare services on par with international best practice. The introduction of electronic health record system known as Al-Shifa represents a success story for Oman. Al-Shifa aims to improve quality of healthcare services and patient safety through the provision of accessible, secure, and accurate records of patient data. After the inception of National Strategy for Oman in 2003 and its revision in 2010, Oman has taken concrete steps to fulfill its national and international obligations toward streamlining information and communication technology (ICT), transforming communities, and integrating societies. The MoH regards the improvement of ICT infrastructure as the main requirement for the delivery of an efficient and reliable eHealth services management system, and have therefore established central quality management and national statistical and monitoring dashboards to audit health institutions performance.