THE FIRST ONLINE DUAL-LANGUAGE RESOURCE FOR HEALTHCARE INFORMATION IN THE ARAB WORLD

Mubadala Healthcare, a division of Mubadala Development Company, has launched an initial phase of Minhaal (Arabic for ‘the source’), the first web portal in the Arab world to offer healthcare information in both English and Arabic languages. The web portal primarily serves the United Arab Emirates, but will also be an important source of knowledge for all Arabic speaking people.

Minhaal has been created by Mubadala Healthcare as a way to help educate and raise awareness about health issues amongst Arabic speakers, and provide related prevention and treatment information that will empower people to make informed choices about their own health and well-being. The project is part of Mubadala’s plan to create a robust private healthcare infrastructure in the region that is supported by state-of-the-art IT systems and technologies to provide a trusted and seamless service for patients.

Patients who visit the site will be able to research the symptoms they are feeling, learn about conditions and look at what possible treatments might be available. Minhaal provides reliable and credible content through syndication agreements with international online resources, such as WebMD. Content is endorsed by an advisory board that presently includes representatives from the Health Authority Abu Dhabi (HAAD) and medical physicians from the Mubadala Healthcare network. The advisory board decides on the relevance of the content, and ensures that the information comprehensively covers prevalent lifestyle diseases in the region. The content then goes through a rigorous translation process before being reviewed and approved by an independent team of translation professionals. Only then is it loaded into the content management system from which the portal publishes its information to the web.

The public launch of this first edition of Minhaal marks the beginning of what will be an ongoing process of continual content updates, reviews and feedback to help improve the service to best suit the needs of the UAE community. Users will be able to provide their feedback on Minhaal in this first phase, and this will be used as input into its subsequent development.

Starting from today, people can log on to the site and search over 65 of the most relevant healthcare topics, specifically targeted towards a Middle Eastern audience. It is hoped that through these further updates, developments and valuable feedback from the public, the site will grow to include over 200 topics. “Minhaal’s ultimate goal is to provide the people of the UAE and Arabic speaking people all over the world with an internet portal that continually provides the most accurate, reliable and up-to-date healthcare related information, said Suhail Al Ansari, Senior Manager for Mubadala Healthcare. “We are pleased to help raise awareness about healthcare issues and prevention tips through this tool.” At today’s Arab Health Exhibition in Dubai, demonstrations of Minhaal will be taking place at stand 2C10/2C20 and the team from Mubadala Healthcare will be on hand to answer questions.