Middle East Health speaks to Dr Denise Basow, President & CEO, Clinical Effectiveness, Wolters Kluwer, Health, about the company’s advanced clinical healthcare solutions designed to assist doctors, pharmacists and patients.
President & CEO, Clinical Effectiveness, Wolters Kluwer
Middle East Health: Can you give us a bit of background about Wolters Kluwer?
Denise Basow: Wolters Kluwer is a large multinational company based in the Netherlands. It has four main verticals in the health, tax and accounting, governance risk and compliance, and legal and regulatory fields. The one thing that unites all these types of businesses is that we provide best-in-class information that helps professionals do their jobs better. Within the health division, which accounts for about a quarter of the overall revenue, we have three main businesses. One is called health learning, research and practice which is our global books and journals business. The second is a small business that manages our clinical terminology and surveillance tools. And third is the clinical effectiveness for health business.
Our mission is to improve the quality and reduce the cost of healthcare globally, by trying to reduce the problem of unwanted variability in care. We do this with four main products: UpToDate, which is a clinical decision-support resource primarily for doctors. It’s sold around the world and is designed to help clinicians answer clinical questions in an evidence-based way. We also have two products under what we call ‘clinical drug information systems’ aimed at helping doctors, pharmacists and nurses reduce prescription errors which are a big problem globally. Our fourth product is called Emmi, which is a multimedia tool with patient interaction to help patients engage with their healthcare.
Middle East Health: Looking at these four healthcare solutions, do you continue to develop them?
Denise Basow: Yes. UpToDate has been around since 1992. It’s our largest product in terms of customers and is sold in 180-plus countries. Although it is very well established, it is in a sense still in development as we continue to innovate and build new products around it. For example, just over a year ago we launched UpToDate Advanced, which doesn’t replace UpToDate, but provides next generation clinical pathways, based on our UpToDate content, to continue to help drive clinical decision making. Lexicomp and Medi-Span, which are in our clinical drug information sector, have been around for almost as long as UpToDate. Emmi has been around for more than 15 years, however, as the patientengagement market in general has been slow to evolve, it is the smallest in terms of customers. It is only sold in the United States.
Middle East Health: Are you planning to expand Emmi to other countries?
Denise Basow: We are, although we don’t have a specific timeline.
Middle East Health: How are the solutions provided to your customers?
Denise Basow: UpToDate and Lexicomp are fully software service solutions. We often package these together, although they can be bought separately. Medi-Span is a package of embedded drug data which sits within the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and, for example, if a physician prescribes a drug it performs automatic screening for drug interactions and correct dosage. So this requires implementation that we sometimes do in combination with EMR vendors. Emmi is a very different solution and it requires implementation with customers.
Middle East Health: What is the difference between Lexicomp and Medi-Span as they both deal with drug information?
Denise Basow: Lexicomp we call our drug reference. It is like UpToDate for pharmacy. It’s been embedded in UpToDate for many years. That information is accessed through a simple search interface on the web and mobile devices. Medi-Span has similar content, but instead of being searchable with a web or mobile interface, it’s a series of data files that are embedded in EMR systems and operates in the background, so that our customers are often unaware of it, because they simply get an alert if there is a problem with the drug they are prescribing.
Middle East Health: Are you working with clients in the Middle East?
Denise Basow: Yes. We have a strong footprint in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the UAE. We do business in other countries in the region as well. Lexicomp is growing in these countries. Medi-Span has a very strong presence in KSA. As countries begin to implement EMRs, often one of the first decision support systems they put in their EMRs are solutions like Medi-Span. While all types of medical records are important, studies show that what really enhances their effectiveness is when you embed decisionsupport systems in them. So, as these countries adopt EMR, Medi-Span tends to grow along with that, as it is a very natural addition to an EMRs. We’ve seen very good success in KSA and we are developing relationships with EMR vendors in other countries in the Middle East. Medi-Span requires us not only to have relationships with hospitals, but also with EMR vendors so we are very active in developing these relationships.
For example, among others, we work with a company called Easy Care Tech in KSA. They’re from South Korea and specialise in implementing EMRs. Medi-Span is being used by the National Guard hospitals in KSA, among others. In the UAE, King’s College Hospital and Mediclinic Middle East are also using UpToDate.
We’re actively expanding our business in the Middle East. We recently held a think tank in Dubai attended by company CEOs and hospital administrators who showed great interest in our products. The UAE healthcare scenario is interesting. It is changing rapidly and there is a lot of funding enabling it to develop in leaps and bounds. The think tank had a focus on innovation and it was a lively discussion. What came out of it was that although innovation is key, it is important not to lose sight of basic healthcare and keeping the patient at the centre of care while improving patient engagement. In other words it is important to strike a balance between innovation and sticking to the core of healthcare – taking care of the patient.
