Get doctor’s advice over the phone – gulfnews.com

Abu Dhabi: Extended waiting periods at the doctor are a frequent complaint across the UAE, and to resolve this, a new service aims to put qualified doctors at residents’ fingertips.

The service, known as Mobile Doctors, uses a smartphone app and a toll-free number to connect callers with licensed physicians. These doctors can dispense primary health care advice, and recommend over-the-counter medicines to deal with common ailments.

“We want to eliminate the process of waiting to see a doctor for basic health care concerns, such as the flu and the regular cold. This would not only ease matters for patients, but also reduce the burden on health care facilities and specialists,” Ziad Alobeidi, medical director at the facility, told Gulf News.

The 24-hour service, which is registered with the Dubai Health Care City, currently has 43 member companies that pay for their own employees or clients to have access to the service. Individual users can also pay Dh10 each month to use Mobile Doctors.

Experts at the mHealth Summit Middle East in the capital on Wednesday stressed the need for a new system of health care delivery. The growing prevalence of chronic diseases means that it is detrimental for patients to frequent specialists when facing primary health care concerns, they said.

For example, in Spain’s northern Basque Country, a telemedicine system has resulted in 20 per cent of all primary health care encounters taking place over the phone within two years of implementation.

“Telephone referrals have long been used in many countries to deal with primary health issues. For example, they have been available for almost 15 years in the United Kingdom. We want to provide a similarly useful service to residents across the UAE, and free up medical specialists,” Alobeidi said.

At present, Mobile Doctors boasts 40,000 members, and they can get in touch with seven family medicine specialists. Both male and female consultants are available, and they can converse with callers in English and Arabic.

Nearly 70 per cent of patients call when afflicted by colds, acute back pain or diarrhoea, Alobeidi said.

“We advise them on what medicines they can safely take without prescriptions, and how to do so,” he added.

In cases that are complicated, the service provides patients with a choice of specialists or refers them to the nearest health care facility.

Asked about the chance of remotely dispensing erroneous advice, the medical director assured that physicians are particularly careful.

“Our physicians are licensed, and they ensure that anything which we cannot verify through telemedicine is referred to a health care facility. Moreover, if required, our doctors can also speak to the patient’s physician and explain our understanding of the case,” he explained.

Mobile Doctors also maintains electronic records, so patients need not repeat their medical history each time they get in touch.