KFMC is one of the most innovative hospitals in Saudi Arabia

Dr. Mahmoud A. Al Yamany, CEO of King Fahad Medical City talks about KFMC being one of the most innovative hospitals in Saudi Arabia.

Do you have many other initiatives in the pipeline? How do you integrate or link education and medical science in this institution as major universities are also linked to the hospitals?

Since inception in 2004 until 2009, KFMC would position itself as healthcare providers and be the best in provision of tertiary care. In between 2009 and 2014, the hospital would establish itself as a leader in training. The strategy is to focus on the training of healthcare providers at all levels from physicians, nurses, technologists to health administrators and economists. Then for the last 5 years starting in 2015, the hospital would be focusing on research.

The city has already established an executive level administration research centre and it is working on basic science and clinical science research. It will take time for KFMC to start publishing major research; we have a lot of research being published every year but it is all on the clinical side. It will take a lot of effort to start building up the basic science side.

The city covers every medical specialty for the training of practitioners. In addition, there are masters programs as joint ventures with international universities such as a masters in health administration, healthcare quality, research, health education etc. and we offer these to KFMC students or employees in a blended learning model where they do their lectures and classes afterhours with video conferencing and they can do most of their modules at KFMC.

They end up doing most of their capstones or projects at work, within their work fields and it has paid dividends. We have been doing that since 2006. A lot of the graduates of healthcare administration are leaders not only at KFMC but also in other healthcare organisations in Saudi Arabia.