An electronic guide developed by the Ministry of Health for searching government hospitals online has benefited about 800,000 people in various cities of the Kingdom, Al-Watan newspaper reported. The paper said patients and their relatives have been constantly facing problems in freely moving around looking for hospitals because of the large number of detours as a result of road works under way in major cities and provinces. These detours have changed recognizable landmarks on main and secondary roads in the cities, making it difficult for patients to find their way to hospitals. "The electronic guide for searching public hospitals has helped hundreds of thousands of patients since it was launched by the Ministry of Health on its Web portal last April," the ministry said. Users can freely search the site without the need for a user name and password, as is normal with other online services on the ministry's website, and they can search for more than one piece of information at a time. The service displays search results in pages if there are more than 20 results. More than 182,000 users participated in an online survey to evaluate the service. The ministry said 33.7 percent of the participants believed the service was very good, 33.2 percent said it was good and the remaining 33.1 percent rated it as a medium type of service. Data analyst Asaad Al-Ghamdi said large numbers of road detours are created in Saudi cities due to ongoing maintenance and expansion work as well as bridge constructions. He said this has led many people to use GPS and other electronic means to find directions to hospitals in a country that has the highest rate of Internet use via smart devices in the Arab region.
