Gulf imaging centres still hand patients their scans on CDs. A cloud platform for scheduling, storage, viewing and reporting aims to change that as national health exchanges come online.
Kanan General Group has been named the exclusive partner across the Gulf Cooperation Council for Envision, a cloud radiology information system that combines scheduling, image storage, a browser-based DICOM viewer and AI-assisted reporting in one platform. The agreement gives KGG sole rights to market, deploy and support Envision in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.
The deal targets one of the last analogue habits in Gulf healthcare. Hospitals across the region have digitised admissions, billing and electronic records, yet a patient who has an MRI in one facility may still leave with a CD, carry it to a specialist elsewhere and wait while someone finds a computer that can open it. Inside the department, radiologists often move between separate programs to schedule a study, retrieve the images, view them and dictate the report.
“Imaging is one of the last parts of the hospital still running on physical media. Envision lets a clinic or a hospital group move radiology to the cloud without replacing the scanners it already owns.”
Khair Tamimi, KGG’s representative in Abu Dhabi
The timing is driven by regulation. Every Gulf state is building national infrastructure for sharing clinical data. In the UAE, providers connect to Malaffi in Abu Dhabi, NABIDH in Dubai and Riayati in the Northern Emirates. Saudi Arabia’s NPHIES platform links providers and payers nationally, Bahrain’s I-SEHA programme unifies patient records, and Qatar, Kuwait and Oman are advancing national e-health programmes of their own. For an imaging centre, each of those connections is easier when orders, images and reports already sit in one standards-based system rather than in four.
Envision brings patient management, visit tracking, the modality worklist, reporting and billing into a single cloud platform. Its viewer opens every common imaging type, including CT, MRI, PET-CT, X-ray, ultrasound, mammography and nuclear medicine, in a web browser, with multiplanar and 3D reconstruction and nothing to install. Referring doctors and patients receive studies through secure links rather than discs. Radiologists dictate, and the system transcribes and formats the report into each facility’s own templates.
The platform connects to Philips, Siemens, GE and other DICOM-compliant equipment through the DICOM and HL7 standards, so a facility keeps the scanners it has. KGG’s implementation team also migrates a customer’s history, importing existing patient records, prior studies and reports from whatever RIS, PACS or archive the facility uses today, so radiologists can compare new scans with old ones from the first day.
“Radiology centres shouldn’t need five systems to do one job. Envision puts patients, visits, AI reporting and DICOM images in one place, in the cloud. Partnering with KGG gives Gulf providers a local team to deploy it and stand behind it.”
Mohamed Tamimi, Senior Software Development Manager, Envision Solutions
Interoperability is ultimately an engineering discipline, and one the region will need more people to master. Dr. Manal Tamimi, a technology and databases consultant and one of the co-founders of KGG who teaches computer engineering at Polytechnic University, has spent more than two decades training students in digital design, computer architecture, databases, networks and software engineering.
“A scan is only useful if it arrives intact, on time and in the right place. That depends on standards applied with discipline, on well-designed databases and on secure networks. When those foundations are right, the radiologist never has to think about them. That is what good engineering looks like, and it is what hospitals should demand.”
Dr. Manal Tamimi, technology and databases consultant and KGG co-founder, Polytechnic University
Three commercial choices set the offer apart. First, Envision is configured to each entity rather than sold as a fixed package. A single clinic may start with the DICOM viewer alone, while a hospital group may run the full RIS, PACS and AI reporting suite across several sites, with its own workflows and report templates.
Second, customers pay for what they use instead of buying a large upfront licence. That lowers the barrier for independent imaging centres and lets larger groups scale costs with patient volumes.
Third, KGG also supplies imaging equipment. It can deliver the scanner and the platform that runs it under one contract, with one point of accountability, which removes a familiar problem for procurement teams: equipment and software vendors blaming each other when an integration fails.
KGG and Envision are also developing a new layer for CT. It is in development and being prepared for pilot use. It is not in general production.
A chest or abdomen CT is handled as one 3D volume, not as a stack of separate images. From that volume, the system prepares a structured draft report with Findings and an Impression. It can also offer optional analysis for the radiologist to review.
The radiologist opens the study in Envision, reviews the images, edits the draft and signs. The signed report is the radiologist’s.
It is a research and pilot direction. It is not a diagnostic device. It is not a substitute for clinical judgement.
KGG is inviting a small number of GCC imaging providers to discuss taking part in a pilot. Whatever the draft says, the radiologist stays in charge of every word.
KGG will focus first on independent imaging centres, private clinics and hospitals preparing to connect to health information exchanges, starting in the UAE and Saudi Arabia before expanding across the GCC. Fewer systems. No more CDs. Ready for the HIE.
Healthcare providers can book a 20-minute Envision demo configured to their own workflow.
About Envision Solutions. Envision Solutions develops Envision RIS, a cloud radiology information system for managing patients and visits, creating reports with AI dictation and viewing DICOM images.
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