Heartening development in Dhahran
Heart disease remains one of the most significant health concerns worldwide. Ongoing work at Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare (JHAH) in Dhahran is hoping to transform cardiac healthcare with the creation of a Heart and Vascular Institute (HVI) that will integrate existing services and leverage advanced technologies and treatment options.
Data is the basis of precision medicine, and HVI anticipates the need to track clinical approaches and outcomes, aggregating globally derived data to allow for their assessment and analysis. This, in turn, will allow HVI to develop the improvements needed across all levels of care.
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Another compelling development that HVI is hoping to explore is to decrease the need to look at surgery as the go to solution. The team at JHAH has developed a program that sees medics review over 500 cases to build the knowledge to make reliable diagnoses, reducing surgical interventions, benefitting both patient and clinician.
Other approaches pioneered at HVI include an enhanced and efficient triage system, building a comprehensive evaluation at the outset, reducing the need for unnecessary visits and improving the quality of care.
JHAH is the only hospital in the Eastern Province offering ablation treatments for the condition of atrial fibrillation. Yet, the clinic has gone a step further in the treatment of this condition, implanting a “Watchman” device, and one-off and minimally invasive treatment to reduce the risk of stroke arising from fibrillation.
HVI will continue to explore novel technologies and techniques, notably their program to develop an integrated transcatheter aortic valve replacement, extending the procedure from high-risk patients to make the treatment available to all patients through the use of the novel technology.
Connection is the key here –using technology to build bridges between physicians, between systems, and across what were previously administrative barriers.
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