King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre in Riyadh is a major Saudi academic medical center focused on specialized and complex care. It combines clinical services with education and research, with strengths across areas such as oncology, organ transplantation, cardiac care, genomics, surgery and neurosciences. You have led major hospitals and health care systems internationally. What has that experience taught you about what truly distinguishes a world-class hospital? It is always a moving target. I am a data person, so I do not say show me the money; I say show me the data. If a hospital says it is excellent, it has to prove that through outcomes: how patients are doing, and how patients feel they are doing, not just what physicians say. The right measures vary by field. In cancer, where we are treating 25 percent of all cancer cases in Saudi Arabia, survivorship is central. For someone having a hip replacement, it is about quality of life, recovery time, what they can do afterwards and whether they have complications. A world-class hospital has to embrace innovation and empower the teams closest to the patient. KFSH is aiming to become a global leader in highly specialized care. What does that ambition mean in practical terms? Medicine has become so specialized that hospitals need to be clear about where they can make the greatest contribution. For us, that means focusing more deeply on tertiary and quaternary care. Around 60 percent of what we do is now in that category, and our aim over the next two years is to reach 80 percent, comparable with other high-end hospitals. A lot has happened in Saudi health care over the past 20 years, much of it at King Faisal. But we have not always opened ourselves up to the international world or explained what we do. There has been a tendency to think regionally, but our ambition is broader: to share our knowledge internationally, and to keep learning from others. Saudi Arabia has historically sent many patients abroad for complex treatment. How much has that changed? There are not many patients being sent abroad in the way they were four or five years ago. The health system is becoming more organized and structured, and we are part of that. We have also been asked to act as the central station for medical tourists for the kingdom and the wider region. Our strongest capabilities are in robotic surgery, transplants and living-donor transplants, where we are among the best in the world in quality and volume. KFSHRC performed 1,092 organ transplants in a single year, and around 9,000 since its transplant program began in 1981. We are also building our own CAR T-cell production, reducing dependence on overseas manufacturing, shortening delays, supporting local clinical trials and bringing therapy costs down by 80 percent from SAR1.3 million per patient, with the aim of expanding production capacity to 100 gene therapies annually. KFSH has performed the world’s first fully robotic heart transplant, the world’s first robotic brain tumor surgery and other advanced robotic cardiac procedures. What have these milestones taught you about the future of complex surgery? As a surgeon myself before becoming a full-time administrator during COVID, I understand how complex these procedures are. Innovation in surgery has to be explored carefully, ethically and in a controlled way. You need a clear idea, preparation, training and a Plan B if something goes wrong. The patient also has to understand what is being attempted. The teams moved step by step, from testing and training to carefully selected clinical use. For the robotic heart transplant, that meant weeks of preparation and rehearsing the procedure virtually before operating on a 16-year-old patient with end-stage heart failure; in neurosurgery, it meant removing a 4.5-centimeter brain tumor robotically and discharging the patient fully conscious within 24 hours. The lesson is that you must not kill the idea, but you must never take shortcuts with patient safety. Robotics allows surgeons to reach places hands cannot reach, avoid some of the trauma of large open procedures, and help patients recover faster. Faster recovery reduces cost, and when care is more efficient, we can treat more patients. How do you create a culture of innovation, and how has that shaped nursing at KFSH? Innovation comes through decentralization. You do not create ideas in an innovation office. The office can help structure, develop or commercialize an idea once it has gone somewhere, but the ideas themselves are born close to the patient. The question is always: how can we do this better for the patient? If it is better for the patient, prove it. That same principle applies to nursing. We are empowering nurses not to be second fiddle to doctors, but part of the team, and empowering nursing managers to stand on their own with consultants and doctors. Our centers of excellence now have their own nurses, who specialize more deeply and understand their patients and teams. Listening to nursing managers means better retention, higher quality work and better care. KFSH has spoken about moving beyond AI pilots. What does it take to make AI, genomics and research work at scale inside a hospital? With AI, the future is here. Last year, we had 31 AI systems in place in the hospital, not as pilots but as part of our work. By the end of this year, we expect to be closer to 50. One major area is administration: doctors spend around 30 percent to 40 percent of their time on admin, often looking more at the computer than at the patient. AI can reduce that burden. The other major area is diagnostics, especially radiology and pathology, where AI can save time and, in some of our studies, is probably more accurate. Genomics is another major part of the future. I thought it would move faster, but the amount of information became overwhelming. Now, with AI and better computing power, that is changing. We are leaders partly because rare diseases here are not always as rare as people might think, which has helped us become pioneers. Three years ago, we had around 40 clinical research projects. Last week, we were up to 290, more than half of all clinical research in the kingdom. Our focus is to treat tomorrow what is not treatable today. KFSH operates within the broader Vision 2030 transformation of Saudi health care. What role should a leading academic medical centre play, and how is the hospital itself changing? Vision 2030 has created a clearer structure for how health care should be delivered in the kingdom and what role different institutions should play. We have moved from operating as a government organization to becoming an independent, not-for-profit institution with a clear role in the most challenging diseases and complex cases. The hospital is also changing. It is not only the building, the equipment and the people inside. Last year, 16 percent of our nearly 2.4 million visits were virtual, an increase of 25 percent year-over-year, meaning patients did not have to travel, park, fly, or bring family members who had to take time off work. Health care is moving closer to the patient, rather than making the patient come to us. Some people call this “Hospital at Home”; I think of it as health care at home. Hospitals will always be there, but what happens inside versus outside is changing fast. This report has been paid for by a third party. The views and opinions expressed are not those of Newsweek and are not an endorsement of the products, services or persons mentioned.

Original source: US