The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) launched a new medical fitness and occupational screening system on September 13, called Salem, which has been integrated with all medical fitness centers in Dubai. The system will reduce customer’s waiting time, minimise human intervention to almost zero and make blood test and X-ray results available electronically.
The move is of significant importance given the vast number of people who require medical fitness services. Medical fitness test is a mandatory requirement for all expats in the UAE. Medical Fitness screening is a prerequisite for a residency, employment or education visa. In 2015, total number of people who visited Dubai Health Authority run medical fitness centers stood at 2,051,802. Of these 843,085 were new applicants and the remaining were visa-renewals.
Salem is integrated with the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs Dubai (GDRFA-D) database and the relevant data will be retrieved directly from GDRFA.
The new system reduced the procedure time at service centers from 45 minutes and above to less than a minute.
Companies with more than 50 employees do not need to go through service centers, as they are provided with unique usernames and passwords so that they can directly fill the applications online using the system. Individuals and companies with less than 50 employees need to go through service centers to fill out their application for visa issuance and renewal. They can log onto the DHA website to find a list of accredited typing centers. Most of the medical fitness centers have an accredited service center in the same premise to provide added convenience in one location to the customer.
The Director IT at DHA, Amani Al Jasmi revealed that DHA is also going to launch an app to further ease the medical fitness test procedures.
His Excellency Humaid Al Qutami, Chairman of the Board and Director General of the DHA said the new smart system is in line with the Dubai 2021 strategy and the Authority’s smart health initiatives that aims to provide customers with added convenience and quicker processing time.
Maisa Al Bustani, Director of Medical Fitness Services Department at the DHA added, “Once the applicant completes all the due screening procedures, the applicant will receive a SMS notification alert and we will send the results electronically via an email.”
