In 1970, the late King Faisal had laid the foundation stone of the hospital that was to bear his name, and in 1975 it was officially inaugurated. This medical edifice has been established in response to society's pressing need for quality medical treatment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The establishment of the hospital has thus helped overcome shortage in therapeutic services.

 

The hospital has more than twenty medical and clinical departments, with over 8,000 support staff, including doctors, nurses, technical and support staff. It has 700 beds.

The hospital has also developed an electronic system whereby each patient has an electronic file to facilitate and expedite inter-departmental treatment, even outside the Kingdom. It has also developed a center for E-Health offering medical and consultancy services across the bodies participating in the E-Health Project.

 

The Research Centre was established in the mid-1970s, and has significantly contributed to the improvement of diagnostic and therapeutic modalities at the hospital through focusing on a limited number of medical fields, chiefly cardiology, comparative medicine and genetic medicine.

 

Some 300 researchers, scientists, doctors and technicians work at the Centre. They have so far undertaken a large number of research projects in collaboration with Saudi and foreign universities.

 

The Centre has also contributed to the establishment of the Medical College, which has crowned the fruitful cooperation between The King Faisal Charity Foundation, and the King Faisal Specialist Hospital. This initiative came in response to the Kingdom's need for more doctors.

 

and also to integrate the Hospital, the Research Centre and the Medical College. Over the last few years the Centre has fulfilled more than 700 research projects all of which were published in Arab and foreign journals.

 

Additionally, the Hospital organizes a number of academic programs, including a program for doctor training, fellowship and continuing medical education programs. Currently, the hospital is implementing a number of ambitious projects through which it hopes top extend its services Gulf wide. Chief among such projects is the establishment of a comprehensive evacuation unit to offer the largest relief and emergency services at the region's level. Moreover, individual hospital departments are subject to continual development, especially the Cardiology Department and its Catheter Unit which has been furnished with state-of-the-art technologies; the Oncology Department, the Pediatric Hematology Department, the Radiology Department, and the Neurology Department. The Hospital receives a large number of cases, and the outpatient Clinics alone receive more than 600,000 cases per year.

 

For these considerations and achievements, The King Faisal Hospital & Research Centre deserves the Hamdan Award for Medical colleges/Institutions or Centres in the Arab World for the year 2003 - 2004.