New system to verify doctors' certificates

ABU DHABI — The General Authority for Health Services for the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (GAHS) has signed an agreement with an international company to verify certificates submitted by medical professionals.

The pact was signed with IntegraScreen, one of the leading global firms dealing with document verification programmes, to enhance GAHS procedures.

Engineer Zaid Al Siksek, Director of Health Policy and Regulation at the GAHS, said, “This new initiative will ensure that the verification procedure is as accurate as possible.”

He added that the new system would not lead to any delay in issuing licences to doctors.

Paul Kane, IntegraScreen´s local director, said, “Fraudulent medical qualifications pose a serious threat to public health in several parts of the world, with unqualified and inexperienced doctors and nurses causing a huge amount of damage to patients and to confidence in the system. By outsourcing and enhancing the process, Abu Dhabi proves once again that it is one of the most forward thinking health authorities.”

As per the agreement, when a health professional applies for a licence, the applicant´s medical certificates along with other documents will be verified by IntegraScreen.

In most of the cases, these will be verified within 30 days.

IntegraScreen currently runs the UAE Ministry of Labour´s highly successful degree verification programme which detected over 500 fake certificates submitted by international job applicants last year.

* Reproduced with permission from Kahleej Times Online