Abu Dhabi : Abu Dhabi Health Services Company, (SEHA) – the UAE’s largest healthcare network announced that their Telemedicine Virtual Outpatient Clinic (VOPC) exceeded 500,000 consultations since its launch last year which accounts for 10% of outpatient appointments across the network.

The service’s remote solutions via audio and video consultations have allowed SEHA’s physicians to evaluate, diagnose, and treat from a distance, in line with the company’s mission to ensure health care remains easily accessible.

Dr Marwan Al Kaabi, Acting Chief Operations Officer at SEHA said, “VOPC continues to play an essential role in our efforts to combat the pandemic while continuing to deliver the world-class care we are renowned for, proving immensely successful and efficient in allowing patients to receive short-term or long-term care across SEHA’s facilities through remote connections with their treating physicians.”

“We are very excited about this latest milestone and we feel that this number will only continue to grow steadily especially as we continue to enhance our digital and technological capabilities overall.”

As part of the initiative, once a patient is scheduled for and consents to a telemedicine consultation appointment, they will receive a call from the physician’s office to confirm patient details. The call will then be patched through to the physician or healthcare professional for the confidential consultation session. Once the call is complete, the patient will be able to access the consultation report through SEHA’s mobile application.

Additionally, SEHA has introduced other strategic initiatives to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, including designating healthcare facilities exclusively for treating COVID-19, establishing 25 drive-through testing facilities nationwide that have seen over 5,953,985 visitors to-date, introducing a dedicated WhatsApp hotline to respond to the community’s coronavirus-related concerns and questions, and easy access to medication by launching a medication home delivery service that has delivered over 138,237 prescriptions to patients’ homes.