Digital health & AI advancements at King Saud Medical City

King Saud Medical City (previously known as Shemaisi Hospital) is one of the largest public district general hospitals. 

In 1956, it had a level one trauma centre in Riyadh and was one of the largest territory care centres in Saudi Arabia, with the capacity for 1,500 inpatients.

In 2020, the first digital operating theatre opened in Riyadh with a robotic surgery and in 2023 the hospital launched its first HIS system.

Today, King Saud Medical City is known for its emergency department and having the largest referral centre in Saudi Arabia for orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery.

Rayed Althukhais is Director of Digital Excellence at King Saud Medical City.

“My responsibility within the in-house and offshore development as well as the integration between internal and external systems,” he explains. “I'm part of the CAP advisory report and the Technical Committee of Digital Transformation in King Saud Medical City.”

Althukhais is also acting as a Programme Director and Portfolio Manager, he is also overseeing the mobility and the business support programmes. He’s proud that the hospital has decided to modernise.

“We have a legacy system that needs to be in commission,” says Althukhais. “Our requirements, such as realtime recording of patient history and better patient health analysis, are not available.” 

King Saud Medical City is utilising AI to support systems capable of assisting the healthcare provider, all with the aim of creating a better patient experience.

King Saud Medical City systems 

HIS System is an element of health informatics, used by King Saud Medical City. This focuses on the administrative needs of hospitals, including:

• System handling
• Data related to activity
• Healthcare providers and the healthcare organisation providing integration

OnBase is an enterprise content management platform from Highland Software, which allows the hospital to organise, manage and optimise content processes and automation. 

AI in digital healthcare

“IBM Maximo Manage is a fully integrated enterprise asset management (EAM) platform that uses advanced analytics tools and IoT data to improve operational availability, extend asset life cycles and optimise performance,” says Althukhais.

Pyxis is an automated medication dispensing system, which is supported by centralised medication management to HIS. 

“Rapid is an AI application which helps with stroke cases, by using AI to analyse CT images. This helps the hospital to identify a stroke at an earlier stage, which allows the team to act and be ready to support a stroke patient.”

Over the next 12 months, King Saud Medical City has a big expansion plan in mind.