How do I track Malaffi data usage for Abu Dhabi DoH compliance?

Malaffi (Abu Dhabi’s Health Information Exchange) requires all licensed facilities to contribute and consume patient data through the platform. DoH compliance audits increasingly focus on whether facilities are actively using Malaffi data for clinical decision-making, not just submitting to it. Demonstrating analytical use of Malaffi-sourced data is becoming a licensing requirement.

DoH compliance for Malaffi operates across three distinct tiers. The first is data submission completeness — the percentage of patient encounters submitted to Malaffi within the required timeframe, with data element completeness meeting the DoH minimum threshold. Most facilities perform well here because submission is a technical process that IT departments manage and monitor systematically.

The second tier is query and retrieval activity — how often clinicians are pulling Malaffi records for patients presenting at the facility. This is where the compliance gap emerges. The DoH audit scorecard tracks query rates by facility type and benchmarks against expected clinical use. An emergency department that never queries Malaffi for a presenting patient — even when that patient has a history of chronic disease or previous hospitalizations in Abu Dhabi — is flagged as non-compliant with the intent of the HIE program.

The third tier is consent management compliance: maintaining accurate records of patient consent for data sharing, consent withdrawals, and the audit trail demonstrating that consent status was verified before data access. This requires integration between the Malaffi consent management module and the facility’s clinical workflow system — a connection that many facilities haven’t built.

The most common Malaffi compliance reporting error is measuring compliance by submission rate alone. A facility submitting 96% of encounters on time concludes it is 96% compliant. The DoH audit scorecard weights submission rate, query rate, and consent compliance roughly equally, meaning a 96% submission rate combined with a 12% query rate and partial consent documentation produces an overall compliance score well below passing threshold.

Query rate data is particularly revealing because it shows how Malaffi is integrated into actual clinical workflows versus how it’s perceived in policy documents. Facilities with strong clinical champions for Malaffi use show query rates above 70% for new patient presentations in emergency and specialist outpatient settings. Facilities without workflow integration show query rates below 15% — the data is being submitted but never consulted, which contradicts the foundational purpose of a health information exchange and will increasingly trigger DoH licensing reviews.

Malaffi query rate tracking should be implemented by department and by clinician type. The dashboard should display queries per new patient encounter, distinguishing between departments where Malaffi lookup is clinically mandated (emergency, ICU, specialist outpatient for chronic disease) and departments where it is discretionary. Departments with query rates below 40% for new patient presentations need targeted workflow intervention.

Clinical workflow integration is the structural fix. The Malaffi query prompt should appear automatically in the clinician’s workflow when a new patient is registered — not as a separate system requiring a separate login. Facilities that have embedded the Malaffi lookup into the patient registration screen or the clinician’s HIS encounter start workflow show query rate increases of 40–60 percentage points within three months of implementation.

Consent documentation audit should run as an automated monthly process: comparing Malaffi consent records against the facility’s patient registration database to identify patients where consent status is unknown or where access was made without confirmed consent documentation. This audit trail is the specific artifact that DoH inspectors request during licensing reviews, and having it available on demand significantly changes the compliance conversation.