The Virtual Medical Academy (VMA) in Saudi Arabia has cemented its position as the leading provider of continuous professional development among healthcare practitioners in the Kingdom. The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, has underscored that quality of life is closely related to the health of individuals and societies, and rightly one of the priorities of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.
Dr. Khaled Abdel Hamid Shahat, founder and CEO of the VMA, said that continuous development of knowledge and skills of qualified health practitioners to deal with different variables and evolving crises is an important enabler of individual and community health. To keep pace with a fast-changing healthcare environment and develop the required expertise, medical practitioners require constant access to up-to-date information, supported by research.
“Professional development and training contribute to enriching the quality of the entire healthcare system,” Dr. Shahat said. “At the Virtual Medical Academy, we organized more than 140 virtual events for more than 200,000 health practitioners in the Kingdom in just a span of four months, together accounting for 2 million hours of e-learning. We believe that equipping our frontline healthcare workers with the best resources for their effectiveness is critical, and is as much a contribution toward societal safeguarding as toward individual and professional enrichment.”
“The current global crisis has played a key role in accelerating digital transformation across sectors, and has proven the effectiveness of e-learning. By adapting to these trends, the healthcare sector was able to train a larger number of healthcare professionals more effectively, efficiently, and frequently, and has laid the foundation for continued virtual and integrated education in the post-pandemic phase,” he added.
“Our commitment is to contribute to the realization of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 and the government’s public-private partnership (PPP) projects such as the ‘Shareek’ initiative of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. We partner with various entities in the fields of healthcare, including governmental institutions, academic entities, and private companies, bringing them virtual education tools and virtual training programs to empower healthcare practitioners. The primary intention is professional development, and scientific and specialist knowledge-sharing, resulting in improved quality-of-life and a better-served community, and acceleration toward the realization of the Kingdom’s vision.”
Today, the VMA is regarded as the leading virtual education and training entity in the Saudi healthcare sector.
More than 270,000 Saudi medical practitioners are registered on this platform, representing more than half of all healthcare professionals working in the Kingdom.