Malaffi, Abu Dhabi - Preparing for lockdown in the digital health industry

We spoke to Dr Bisera Lakinska from Malaffi – the first Health Information Exchange Platform in the Middle East, operated by Abu Dhabi Health Data Services, a digital health company. They used our Road to Recovery offer to assess how they were dealing with the crisis. This is how they got on.

The challenge: testing new systems and procedures

• Testing the efficacy of remote working
• Establishing new communications systems
• Sending clear guidelines to staff

Malaffi tested working from home before lockdown began, to make sure they could carry on uninterrupted. They also established communication systems and sent clear guidelines to their staff – but they also needed to know how their people were feeling.

The solution: our ‘Readiness’ survey

• Our ‘Readiness’ survey, to assess their crisis response
• A ready-to-send survey, complete with suggested communications

Malaffi set up a survey to assess their readiness for the crisis. Specifically they wanted to know how their employees were feeling:

• If they felt they had all the information and the support they needed for the new situation
• If they felt more isolated from their colleagues and not in touch with the big picture
• How it was affecting their wellbeing and mental health.

This was even more important as Malaffi are directly involved with developing solutions to support the COVID-19 response of Abu Dhabi. There was an increased workload, responsibility and pressure.

The results: confirmation of a resilient culture

• A very high score of 94% for their crisis readiness
• New learnings about their employees’ needs
• Feedback on an employee engagement programme

Malaffi were confident they’d created a culture of cooperation, open communication and appreciation, but – as ever – it was worthwhile confirming this rather than taking anything for granted.

They scored a very high overall of 94%, but they also learned:

• Employees were very much interested in the overall achievements of the organisation and wanted more regular updates
• Employees wanted more transparency about future challenges
• People wanted their leaders to address concerns about establishing a healthy work-life balance.

Malaffi also took the opportunity to get opinions on an employee engagement programme that would motivate physical activity, offer life coaching sessions and volunteering activities.

The next steps: support for initiatives, and procedural changes

With the results of the survey, they got widespread support for some of the initiatives and activities which confirmed they should keep going. They also increased the frequency of their virtual all-staff meetings and adapted the content to the issues highlighted by the team members in the survey.

Malaffi plans to follow up with another survey to understand the results. They’ll keep testing and validating how they’re doing after two months of working from home.