Golnar Kamalvand

Managing Principal Consultant, Ascend HealthCare Solutions, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Reema Abu-Dawas, Senior Quality Manager, Ascend Healthcare Solutions, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

With over 15 years of experience in business development, project management and marketing in healthcare, life sciences and FMCG industries, Golnar has been focused on developing programs with public and private partners with the goal of mutual value creation and local capability development to establish sustainable healthcare delivery models with the ultimate goal of a preventative outcomes- driven healthcare system nurturing a healthier community.Golnar led the development of Ascend’s Solutions strategy with focus on Care Area Solutions (i.e. Oncology, Cardiology, Primary Care) working with partners like GE Healthcare among others. Passionate about coaching and people development, Golnar also served as the Director of the Ascend Leadership Development Program.For passed 2 years, she has driven the Consulting business at Ascend as well as leading multiple strategic client initiatives including the COVID-19 Mass Testing Program and COVID-19 Vaccination Programs.Prior to joining Ascend, Golnar spent 7 years at GE Healthcare, where in her last role she was Marketing Director covering the entire GE Healthcare portfolio for Saudi Arabia developing the organization strategic and tactical marketing plans, implementing impactful growth campaigns and brand positioning. Previously, as part of the GE Healthcare Solutions team, she was responsible for the development and implementation of programs in Saudi Arabia with key public stakeholders (i.e. Public Health Campaigns, Oncology, Research, Life Sciences) leveraging global health strategies, GE best practices and innovative methodologies to operationalize healthcare solutions.In her previous role as Healthcare & Life Science Sector Manager at the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), she was promoting and facilitating international healthcare and life science investments into Saudi Arabia, developing cluster strategies and business cases for a variety of industries (pharmaceutical, medical device, agri-business, environmental and renewable energy). She was also earlier a Senior Account Executive for Publicis-Graphics, leading the go-to-market strategy and launch for Nestle products in new markets in the Middle East.

Rapid Start-Up Leveraging Technology to Drive Improvement

Ascend Healthcare Solutions is an agile startup company founded in 2018 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with an ambitious vision to accelerate transformation in the Saudi healthcare sector.With a highly skilled leadership and the robust reinforcement of leading global and local players including General Electric (GE) and Alfozan holding company, Ascend has provided clients with solutions to overcome their greatest challenges in delivering best-in-class healthcare to patients in Saudi Arabia. The implementation of an effective quality management system has been integral to the success of any growing firm like Ascend. Working in conjunction with key service lines and running departments, the quality team ensured that the necessary policies, plans and standard operating procedures are established in each vertical. An organization-wide culture of quality was introduced in the form of extensive training programs for all staff including but not limited to a Certified Internal Auditor training abiding to the ISO 9001 requirements. It resulted in a maturity level of auditee becoming as keen as the auditor to diagnose areas of possible improvements. Aiming to identify any potential risks, failures and non-conformances associated with customer and stakeholder requirements, an internal auditing schedule for all projects has been created ensuring effective action is taken to resolve any issues and identify the root causes. This solid foundation has been translated into live dashboards that focus on business priorities and provides a metrics and management framework for teams to take timely actions. The dashboards also provide insightful information on the number of internal audits planned per project, number of internal audits completed, number of non-conformities identified, and time taken to take a corrective action. Ascend uses an in-house ticketing system as a methodology to document the audits carried out by raising tickets to drive corrective actions. The tickets are followed up and alerts are automatically sent if no action is taken past the due date set by the auditor. This ultimately has resulted in massive reduction of costs of errors and corrective actions.