National e-health system for all Qatar will establish an effective and integrated national e-health system ensuring full compatibility across all levels of care and full participation by all healthcare providers. This has been announced in the National Development Strategy (NDS) 2011-2016 launched on Monday. It is envisaged to raise the percentage of primary care practitioners accessing the online diabetes registry from 0% to 25%. It will be ensured that 100% of medical images taken at hospitals are digitally stored and shareable among physicians. The percentage of community pharmacies submitting dispensing information to the e-prescription system is to be raised from 0% to 25%. The government will formulate a strategy to enable greater private sector involvement in providing healthcare services while ensuring appropriate regulatory oversight. The goal is to raise the share of healthcare beds provided by the private sector from 20% to 25%. In order to improve the efficiency of and access to community pharmacies, the government will establish a network of community pharmacies. The network will be supported by appropriate policy and processes, which reduces reliance on hospitals for filling prescriptions, leading to increased efficiency and enhanced access. The goal is to bring the number of community pharmacies to 0.17 per 1,000 people, with a 70% dispensing rate. The NDS observes that the current healthcare system in Qatar needs improved co-ordination and standardisation, to reduce fragmentation of care and system inefficiencies. It is proposed to establish protocols for priority conditions (cardiac, asthma, diabetic emergencies) and achieve a compliance rate of 100% by 2014. Implementing performance agreements in 100% of hospitals and Primary Healthcare Centres and 50% of major polyclinics is also on the agenda. In order to ensure access to accurate healthcare data, the objective is to achieve an 80% data-compliance rate for healthcare providers, coding accuracy of 80%, and establish disease registries for the top five priority diseases. The NDS has called for developing a comprehensive nutrition and physical activity programme by establishing health promotion in schools, wellness promotion in the workplace, policies to reduce fast food consumption and promote healthy food options at restaurants and key retail outlets. The targets are to decrease the prevalence of obesity from 32% to 29% for all residents and from 40% to 37% for Qataris, and achieve a 10% weight reduction for people enrolled in dietary services programmes.

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