The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) has begun rolling out a comprehensive telemedicine infrastructure that should soon allow all residents covered by government healthcare to obtain online consultations with primary-care physicians and specialists. The first pilot for the new service is already underway, and the DHA has put into place a regulatory framework that will ease expansion of the program. Telemedicine is one of a number of healthcare innovations the DHA plans to apply over the next four years, including 3D printing of medical and dental devices, comprehensive electronic health record and informatics systems, and a lifestyle-based preventive medicine program.

The Kenya government announced that residents covered by the country’s national healthcare insurance will now have a much wider range of provider facilities to choose from when seeking outpatient care. Options for outpatient care have been restricted to certain designated facilities, but now outpatient services at more than 2,000 public and private hospitals will be covered by national insurance. In addition, service options will be portable between facilities. The national insurance fund, which covers all full-time-employed residents and is available at relatively low cost to others, currently includes about six million members out of a population of 50 million, and has been expanding membership at a rate of nearly one million people a year.

UAE’s Ministry of Health and Prevention signed an MoU with South Korea’s CBC International to jointly build hospital training programs for UAE healthcare professionals. The partnership will bring doctors and other health practitioners to a number of leading South Korean hospitals, including Asan Medical Center, Ajou University Hospital, Halim University Medical Center, Severance Hospital, Seoul National University Hospital, and Chungnam National University Hospital. The agreement seeks to advance medical expertise in UAE’s health-ministry-run hospitals, establish annual international conferences and seminars in South Korea, and foster more international partnerships to expand both nations’ healthcare systems globally.

Brazil’s Institute of Supplementary Health Studies (IESS) registered a 19.4% increase in hospital costs between 2015 and 2016, the largest rise recorded in a 12-month period since measurements began in 2008. An IESS official contended that the growth is most likely a result of poor management, an excessive number of preventable hospital visits, an aging population requiring more chronic-disease treatment, and new technologies acquired by hospitals that don’t pay off because hospitals lack the infrastructure to support and maintain them. The official added that new payment models and quality indicators have been put in place to combat the rise.

A Yale School of Medicine research team was awarded US$3.7 million by the World Bank and the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration to build up Liberia’s medical education and healthcare infrastructure. A third of the funding will be used to recruit physicians from West Africa and the U.S. as faculty at Liberia’s A.M. Dogliotti College of Medicine, which currently suffers a 50% student-dropout rate. The team will also assist in recovering and rebuilding following the Ebola epidemic of 2014 and 2015, which left Liberia’s four million people with only 40 doctors — the lowest healthcare-provider-to-population ratio in the world — after much of the country’s healthcare workforce contracted the disease.

Meirion Thomas, former cancer surgeon at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital, said that NHS services are being stretched thin by medical tourism. The crisis, according to him, is a result of the influx of overseas patients who are not entitled to NHS’ government-funded care — many of these patients are being treated for cancer, HIV, infertility and renal failure. Proposals to ease this reported burden involve the U.K. government to modify legislations so it can charge the patients’ home country for treatment costs.

U.S. digital-healthcare vendor CoinMD is expanding its digital payment and health-record network globally, claiming the move will facilitate overseas treatment options for U.S. patients. The Atlanta-based company says its network can negotiate lower fees among healthcare providers in Costa Rica and other countries hoping to attract U.S. medical tourists, and that its platform provides a secure means for patients to port their health records to those providers.

Brazil’s Ministry of Health is set to implement an automated system that will track the inventory of all medications covered by the country’s National Health System (SUS). The new system is expected to prevent up to 30% of annual pharmaceutical waste due to mismanagement inefficiencies that cause some high-cost medications to expire before being properly distributed to the public — a move that would save Brazil’s health system some US$460 million (R$1.5 billion) every year. By digitizing the whole process, the Ministry also hopes to avoid the massive drug shortages that have plagued the country as of late.

The country of Qatar is expected to invest some US$19 billion in several development projects in Turkey throughout 2018, including in healthcare. About 75% of the investment will come from the Qatar Investment Authority, one of the world’s largest wealth funds, while the rest will come from the investment fund Q Invest. According to the head of the Middle East Economy Platform, Turkey’s health-sector benefit from the potential investment will include the development of specific hospital projects in which Qatar has shown interest.

Medtronic, a global medical technology company, and healthcare IT vendor Mercy Technology, a branch of the U.S.-based Catholic healthcare system Mercy, are partnering to establish a data sharing and analysis network to gather clinical information captured during routine patient visits and analyze patient conditions before and after exposure to a medical device. The network is being eyed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a potential model for its National Evaluation System for Health Technology project, which aims to accelerate regulation for new innovative therapies.