How a Bahrain Hospital Achieved Full-Scale Transformation
ICT Director Hamad Saeed Abdulrahman on Healthcare Infrastructure Transformation
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, the ICT directorate at King Hamad University Hospital in Bahrain was tasked with undertaking a complete cloud transformation of the hospital. It was not an easy task as the directorate was managing infrastructure for both the hospital and Bahrain Oncology Center, as well as the associated university. The ICT directorate is responsible for development, operations and security of the infrastructure.
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Two years later, the directorate has a number of achievements to its credit. It not only completed its cyber drill in healthcare but also brought to fruition an ambitious project of storing millions of medical images with a total data volume of 48 TB in Amazon S3 buckets.
But there were several challenges to overcome, including cyberthreats, particularly with email systems. To manage the workload, the directorate moved to a cloud topology. Another challenge was the sprawl of IoT medical devices.
"Our hospital has a big network with multiple IoT devices. So we segregated the devices into a separate network and into smaller chunks," says Hamad Saeed Abdulrahman, director of information and communication technology at King Hamad University Hospital.
In this video interview with Information Security Media Group, Abdulrahman discusses:
- Technology used to solve digital transformation challenges;
- ICT and cybersecurity initiatives in the healthcare industry in Bahrain;
- Strategies to close skilling and talent gaps.
Abdulrahman is a digital strategist with more than 18 years of experience in implementing digital transformation initiatives. He specializes in DevOps, digital transformation and cybersecurity. Prior to healthcare, he worked in multiple public and private sectors, including consultancy and aviation entities.
