KUWAIT: President of the Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences (IOMS) Dr Mohammad Al-Jarallah stressed that artificial intelligence (AI) and digital health are the main axis for developing the skills of health officials and their ability to make decisions in health institutions. This came in a press statement made by Dr Al-Jarallah on Saturday, on the sidelines of a virtual scientific symposium held by the organization via the Zoom program under the theme “Health practices.....Making health decisions at the right time”.

About 500 doctors and health workers from a number of countries participated in the program. Al-Jarallah pointed to the importance of the World Health Organization’s orientations towards establishing artificial intelligence in achieving the goals of sustainable development and universal health coverage, noting that continuous training programs using digital health can improve practitioners’ ability to make accurate and quick decisions by up to 40 percent.

President of the Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences Dr Muhammad Al-Jarallah

He stressed the importance of the symposium’s topic, which establishes the need to make the right decision at the right time in light of digital development, stressing the importance of making good clinical decisions in diagnosis and treatment at the right time without delay so as not to lead to a worsening of the patient’s health condition.

Al-Jarallah stressed the importance of balance in the use of artificial intelligence, warning at the same time against rapid development without regulatory controls that guarantee justice, equality, and ethical and legal aspects. He referred to the “Kuwait Document for Artificial Intelligence” issued by the organization to become the nucleus of a global document to establish ethical and legal controls for the use of artificial intelligence in health care.

He explained that the use of artificial intelligence to improve patient safety and prevent medical errors is important, considering that this is a shared responsibility that falls on all health workers, “as studies conducted by the World Health Organization have shown that medical errors cause the death of millions of people around the world annually”. He pointed out that this is where the importance of digital health comes in adopting the best global practices in the field of patient safety and developing monitoring and reporting systems for medical errors, calling for the establishment of a Gulf and Arab network to develop the skills of health leaders using artificial intelligence. — KUNA