New medical social media in UAE

Sunday, Aug 17, 2014

Dubai: Imagine a Facebook with only certified doctors as friends and you get the idea — doctors sharing the latest news and medical advancements with each other on their own social media platform to help each other as well as patients get better care.

That’s precisely what has happened with a new e-platform dubbed Doxunity, a new secure web platform launched in the UAE that will enable doctors to connect with other health-care professionals and collaborate regarding patient treatment across the Middle East and North Africa region.

The e-platform, say founders, will improve networking between doctors, allow them to solicit the opinions of other doctors on medical matters and allow for health-care professionals to tap into collective industry experiences in a cost-effective manner.

According to Fadi A. Muhsen, founder and managing partner of Doxunity, only doctors will be allowed access to the platform, which augments Dubai’s bid to be the top hub for medical tourism worldwide.

“We have created a kind of a ‘virtual doctors lounge’ that enables doctors to create groups for certain discussions,” Muhsen said. “They can create a public group where everyone can join and collaborate or they can make it a private group which can only be accessed by invite or they can make a group focusing on a particular speciality such as cardiology.”

As part of the security of the platform, Doxunity employs a two-tier verification method to ensure would-be users are bona fide doctors. First, they get an automated email after signing up, to which they are supposed to respond using their work email. The second aspect of the verification will see them attach a copy of their practising licence to the email.

“Once we receive that, we call the health-care authority or regulating body in that region and use the practitioner’s licence number to verify and cross-check their credentials,” Muhsen said. “After that’s completed, we have an algorithm in the system that then goes and unlocks their profile, making it visible to everyone else using the platform. If one fails to verify within 48 hours, their account gets suspended until they do.”

Muhsen said they plan to work with the government soon to help “innovate the health-care laws in the region”.

“We want to start lobbying for that, for certain health-care laws that have not been implemented in the region such as those governing the sharing of patient data on Facebook, which should not happen, because Facebook is open to everybody,” he said.

“Even though the doctors have good intentions and are doing that to get advice, they shouldn’t be doing it on Facebook. Instead, they should be doing it on more secure platforms for bona fide health professionals,” he said.

The platform also features a customised news feed tailored to each physician’s interests and speciality.

By Kuda Chikwanda Staff Writer