Munich Health launches health coaching in Abu Dhabi

Demographic development, medical progress and changing lifestyles are resulting in costly medical treatments. These place a strain on healthcare systems worldwide – whatever stage of development they are in. The main challenge is the steep upward trend in chronic diseases.

Daman National Health Insurance, in which Munich Re’s Munich Health operation has a 20% stake, has opened a new medical service centre in Abu Dhabi. Together with almeda GmbH, Munich-Re-Group’s assistance and telemedical healthcare service provider, this centre offers healthcare programmes to patients with chronic diabetes and obesity. These healthcare services are an integral part of Munich Health’s business model, along with programmes for acute diseases (case management) and for the treatment of chronic diseases (disease management). In the same way as complementary prevention programmes, they help ease the cost burden from (potential) diseases. Wolfgang Strassl, CEO of Munich Health: "Our business model combines global know-how with local knowledge. We are steadily expanding our extensive partnerships with primary insurers. Above all, this benefits the policyholders, ensuring that high-quality healthcare services will continue to be affordable in the future."

Unless preventive measures are taken, it will not be long before diabetes and obesity become especially common in the United Arab Emirates. Daman in Abu Dhabi has therefore focused initially on treatment of those two conditions. Under the disease management programme, specially trained coaches will give regular counselling to the chronically sick over the telephone in order to improve their quality of life in the long term and coordinate the diabetes therapy. Daman has therefore been involved in making the cultural changes needed to adjust the telemedical healthcare programmes successfully run in Germany for many years to the Arabian market. Stefan Kottmair, almeda’s CEO: "For the first time, we have successfully deployed our wide-ranging telemedical expertise in the international market. Special software is used to ensure the operational processes run efficiently."

Michael Bitzer, CEO of Daman National Health Insurance: "Although the launch was only eight weeks ago, we have already had positive feedback from our patients. Our local coaches benefit in their contacts with the patients from the comprehensive training given by almeda and Munich Health."

The Munich Re Group operates worldwide, turning risk into value. In the financial year 2008, it achieved a profit of €1,528m on premium income of around €38bn. The Group operates in all lines of business, with around 44,000 employees at over 50 locations throughout the world and is characterised by particularly pronounced diversification, client focus and earnings stability. With premium income of around €22bn from reinsurance alone, it is one of the world's leading reinsurers. The primary insurance operations are mainly concentrated in the ERGO Insurance Group. With premium income of over €17bn, ERGO is one of the largest insurance groups in Europe and Germany. It is the market leader in Europe in health and legal expenses insurance, and 40 million clients in over 30 countries place their trust in the services and security it provides. In international healthcare business, the Munich Re Group pools its insurance and reinsurance operations, as well as related services, under the Munich Health brand. The global investments of the Munich Re Group amounting to €175bn are managed by MEAG, which also makes its competence available to private and institutional investors outside the Group.

With 20 years of experience in providing medical and technical assistance and over ten years in the field of telemedical healthcare services, almeda offers insurers and large companies the expert support they need to service their clients. The highly qualified staff at the almeda Service Center provide a worldwide, round-the-clock service to assist people facing disease and healthcare emergencies. In the healthcare market, almeda offers a range of individual disease and demand management services as well as managed care services for private and statutory health insurers. almeda has long-term, evidence-based healthcare programmes specifically designed to help chronically ill patients.