Dubai Health Authority - Innovation in Medical/Dental

Company: Dubai Health Authority
Company Description: With a mission to transform Dubai into a leading healthcare destination by fostering innovative and integrated care models and by enhancing community engagement, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) is the Government Department responsible for the provision of public health cares services in the Emirate of Dubai in addition to regulation of the Private Health Care Sector.
Nomination Category: New Product Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Award for Innovation in Medical/Dental

Nomination Title: Diagnostic & Prognostic liquid biopsy biomarkers for Asthma

Provide an essay of up to 625 words describing the nominated innovation's concept, value, delivery, and impact since July 1 2018:

Asthma is a chronic disease characterized by recurrent attacks of breathlessness and wheezing, which vary in severity and frequency from person to person. 235 million people suffer from asthma worldwide. The annual economic cost of asthma is more than $81.9 billion. Realizing the importance of Asthma and respiratory diseases, the World Health Organization issued a dedicated strategy for prevention and control of chronic respiratory diseases. There is a sharp increase in asthma in developing countries (including Gulf countries).

A survey of 1,000 patients performed in five countries: Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman and United Arab Emirates, resulted in 68% with day asthma and 51% with night asthma symptoms in the last 4 weeks. The asthma control in the Gulf and Near East region is low (less than 20%).

Prevalence of asthma in UAE is 8% among adults and 12% - 13% among children, where asthma is the most common non-communicable disease among children in Dubai. The number of asthmatic patients in the private sector of Dubai has grown 33% from 2015 to 2016, while pulmonology related healthcare services costed Dubai Health Authority 67,095,996 AED in the year 2018 and cost of Imaging out of which respiratory diseases diagnosis is a considerable component amounted 206,162,913 AED for the same year.

The usual medical practice for diagnosis of Asthma is lung X-ray and relevant blood tests. These tools are only used for diagnosis following the symptoms prevalence and not to forecast or predict Asthma and its severity.

DHA came up with an innovative technique using a saliva test to define the type of asthma the patient has or might develop in the future and grants him/her a prognosis on how bad this asthma is going to affect their life. In addition, and thanks to the algorithms being installed into DHA’s Electronic Medical Records system, the system is able to suggest the most suitable treatment to be used by analyzing the saliva test results.

This technique is the first of its kind worldwide and has been registered as a patent at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. DHA was keen on knowledge transfer of the innovative technology on wider scale, where it was transferred to health facilities in Saudi Arabia & the UAE being successfully used for 60 patients in total up till now.

The impact the new technology had on patients worldwide was enhanced wellbeing and medical outcome due to early detection and prognosis of Asthma in addition to the ability to prescribe the best treatment due to enhanced correction, in addition to saving the cost of X-rays and blood tests in addition to saving the time of patients. In addition, in some severe asthma cases, the patients had to undergo biopsy procedures with exposure to infections and anesthesia. This can be replaced with a saliva swap now thanks to the invention.

An abstract about the technique has also been included in the International Conference on Pulmonology and Respiratory Medicine in Paris, France.