UAE has great opportunity to innovative technology in paediatrics : Dr. Newman

Abu Dhabi, Aug 8, 2012 (WAM) - The UAE has a great opportunity to lead in new paediatric technology to improve healthcare for children, a proven leader in the development and application of innovative treatments for childhood illness and injuries said last night. Dr. Kurt Newman, President and CEO of Children s National Medical Centre at the Sheikh Zayed Campus for Advanced Children's Medicine in Washington, told the Mohammed bin Zayed Ramadan Majlis about a new forward-thinking concept in medicine about finding new ways of prevention and taking care of children. Speaking at a lecture title ''Changing the Future of Health through Paediatrics’', he reviewed the growing partnership with Abu Dhabi, which he said, crowned by establishing The Sheikh Zayed Institute for Paediatric Surgical Innovation at Children s National Medical Centre, located in Washington, D.C.. The health facility was made possible by a generous gift from the Government of Abu Dhabi in September 2009. The Sheikh Zayed Institute for Paediatric Surgical Innovation reflects the shared values to build this partnership to benefit children in the United States, in the United Arab Emirates, and around the world." The lecture was attended by His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, H.H. Lt.General Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, H.H. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs, H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Foreign Minister, Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, a crowd of Sheikhs, senior officials, diplomats and doctors. The Institute aims to develop knowledge, tools, and procedures that will make surgery more precise, less invasive, and pain-free. It will offer opportunities for information transfer and innovation discoveries that will benefit children in both the Emirate and around the globe. ''Children s National Medical Centre has a longstanding relationship with the United Arab Emirates and treats many UAE patients every year. The advances in paediatric medicine made at the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Paediatric Surgical Innovation will have an impact on the children in Washington, in the UAE, and across the globe. ''That concept of thinking forward can transform the way we think about healthcare for children and avoiding diseases. The Children's National Medical Centre and Abu Dhabi have been maintaining longstanding partnership for 20 years. We have treated hundreds of children with serious health problems every year,'' Dr. Newman, also the surgeon-in-chief at the Centre, said. ''Our goal with our partnership is to improve paediatric medicine for children in Abu Dhabi, Washington and around the world.'' ''Telemedicine program in Fujairah created allowing for live consultations between medical specialists in Washington and UAE.'' He hoped the partnership would be expanded to develop a network of new leaders in paediatrics in the UAE to shape a new vision for children medicine. ''It s an unbelievable partnership that looks for new technology to treat children diseases. He said the new approach in paediatrics is revolved around what to anticipate and figure out what is going to happen. ''Anticipatory Medicine is A New Way of Thinking: Start from a child's perspective for a healthy adult and thinking ahead in healthcare: taking care of children today to improve everyone's health tomorrow.'' ''The new anticipatory medicine approach is based on based on prevention, detection and intervention,'' he added. Three million children die in the first month of age. 330,000 suffer accidental injuries every year and 830,000 die of diseases. In future, he noted, advances in technology, screening and genetic medicine will be used to identify and anticipate people's future health issues and to find ways to address or even eliminate the health issues before they develop. ''Pulse-oximetry (Pulse-ox) screenings implemented by Health Authority -Abu Dhabi (HAAD) and Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA) to screen for congenital heart defects in newborns have saved lives.'' And, he went on to say, genetic medicine will permit early intervention in prevention of adult disorders: obesity, type II diabetes, asthma. Epigenetics will lead to the development of new medications or therapies to eliminate certain diseases while foetal neuromedicine allows doctors to fix health issues before birth. He said the Health Authority Abu Dhabi (HAAD) together with Children s National Medical Centre rollout of a newborn screening program in Abu Dhabi for critical cyanotic congenital heart disease (CCCHD), the most serious form of congenital heart disease (CHD). Made possible by a long-standing relationship between HAAD and Children s Sheikh Zayed Institute for Paediatric Surgical Innovation, the program aims to increase knowledge and skills in pulse oximetry, a non-invasive and cost-effective screening procedure that detects CCCHD in newborns. By using pulse oximetry, HAAD estimates that 10 Abu Dhabi children each year will be diagnosed with CCCHD and will receive treatment early enough to more effectively manage the condition. According to him, the Institute is the world's first health facility to adopt creative technology in medicine, making the UAE the first country to apply that innovative model. Speaking the Pain Medicine Initiative, he said pain is one of the most challenging and misunderstood issues in paediatric care due in part to the difficulty of measuring it in newborns and other young patients who cannot effectively communicate their experience. The Pain Medicine Initiative brings a solution through the development of the first device capable of providing an objective measure of a child s pain. Once Institute researchers can measure pain accurately, they will be able to begin to eliminate it with more effective medications and treatments. ''More than 80,000 children were screened by pain measuring device, algometer,'' he added. Children s National Medical Centre, he said had added robotic surgery as a minimally invasive option for some paediatric urologic procedures. The arrival of this robotic surgery system is another logical step toward improving surgical care for children. – Emirates News Agency, WAM