UAE's health ministry adopts new technology to streamline document sharing

The United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Health launched the electronic common technical document (eCTD) program Oct. 15 to help pharmacies and health institutions share key regulatory and pharmacological documents and information.

The UAE partnered with German e-document security software developers EXTEDO to create the eCTD program.

Going forward, EXTEDO will lend its expertise in creating common web-based technical documents to the task of standardizing electronic submission management in the UAE. To do that, the Ministry of Health will deploy a suite of EXTEDO’s management tools.

The German company’s EURS software will be used to more efficiently review and validate all electronic submissions while the EURSvalidator will be used as the submission validation engine. The UAE will also be adopting the company’s eCTDmanager, which helps build and create submissions for the EURS system.

The UAE’s Assistant Undersecretary of Public Health Policy and Licensing Dr. Amin Al Amiri said the step is an important milestone for medical security in the nation. Other GCC member states are set to follow the UAE’s new system, with Saudi Arabia and Oman already preparing.

“We work closely with regulatory authorities and standards bodies around the world to make sure that all of our products fully support the latest standards,” Martin Schmid, EXTEDO’s CEO, said. “With the new partnership with the Ministry of Health UAE we’ll be able to expand our global footprint of supporting Health Authorities with their key objectives to make patients life saver.”