Elegancia Healthcare, part of Estithmar Holding, a healthcare leader in Qatar, is reimagining how healthcare is delivered in the country by establishing key partnerships with world-class affiliations and bringing them to the GCC. The venture’s first flagship hospital is the ‘View Hospital’, which it launched in affiliation with Cedars-Sinai in December last year. It is one of the first hospitals in the country to feature a fully hybrid operating theatre.

Nauman Niyaz Jan, Senior Director – Healthcare Ventures, Elegancia Healthcare, shared: “Our aim is to provide high-end healthcare to the people of Qatar and nurture world-class partnerships. We are achieving this by redefining how patients are being treated, from the design and planning of the institute to the care delivery models we are using. Our affiliation with Cedars-Sinai is in place for the next 10 years.”

Nauman Niyaz Jan

Furthermore, in June this year, Elegancia Healthcare will launch the ‘Korean Medical Centre (KMC)’ to bring Korean healthcare expertise to Qatar. “Korea is renowned for its medical tourism, and people from around the world travel there for cosmetics, plastic surgery, dermatology, non-invasive spinal surgeries, and IVF treatments, among others. The launch of KMC will bring these niche services to the country,” he added.

Elegancia Healthcare’s third venture is a public-private partnership (PPP) with the Qatari Armed Forces. It will involve managing and operating a 400-bed Military Medical Centre, which will be launched in Q3 of this year. The Centre is being established in partnership with Germany’s WMC Healthcare and will offer expertise in specialities such as orthopaedics and spine. The organisation also has a partnership with Korea’s ASAN Medical Centre and will collaborate with them on a healthcare screening centre.

Jan highlighted: “We are catering to the diverse population of Qatar. Some people might prefer treatment from an American healthcare system, while others might opt for German or Korean expertise. Therefore, we wanted to bring the best of all levels.”

When asked about how healthtech is paving the way for improved patient outcomes, he stressed that the GCC is ahead of the curve as it is nimble and not bogged down by legacy systems and has an investor-driven sentiment. He further said there has been a noticeable shift in the industry, as healthcare providers are keenly adopting the latest technological advancements in their clinical and non-clinical operations.

“I believe this is the right region to invest in as the healthcare providers have a growth mindset. The ecosystem is also right because the insurance models are in place to support it,” he added.

He concluded: “It is crucial to ensure that you have the right partners because with the explosion of health tech, misinformation can spread and, hence, getting the right experts to evaluate the solutions is essential. Ultimately, any technology or solution must benefit the patient. If it is not improving their lives, then it’s not a technology you need to adopt.”

This article appears in Omnia Health magazine. Read the full issue online today.

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At the recently concluded Arab Health 2023, Presight AI signed an MoU with G42 Healthcare, an artificial intelligence (AI) healthtech company based in Abu Dhabi, to develop a foundational big data model.

Leveraging Presight’s omni-analytics platform and G42 Healthcare’s in-depth expertise in the health industry, the collaboration will result in the exploration of population health management, wellness and performance data prediction, and time-sequenced events and behavioural analysis prediction.

The collaboration will transform the analytical capability of hospitals and healthcare facilities, improving record collection and understanding advanced digitised processes, such as optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language processing (NLP), used in the healthcare industry. This eases administrative practices, improves data accuracy, and reduces manual data entry. By combining data collected from smartwatches, wristbands, and advanced omics applications, organisations will advance personal health analytics to improve the early detection of health issues and provide recommendations on necessary diets, sleeping schedules, and exercise plans for optimal health.

In an interview, Dr. Fahed Al Marzooqi, Chief Operating Officer, G42 Healthcare, said: “All our efforts are focused towards bringing early detection and precision medicine to the table. Adopting such a model will not just deliver quicker diagnoses, but positively impact a patient’s health journey and health system finances, to benefit individuals as a whole.”

Dr. Fahed Al Marzooqi

He stressed that thanks to the vision of the UAE’s leadership, the country led the fight against the pandemic and is today at the forefront of leading the way for change in the healthcare industry. “We have the best of the best healthcare institutions within the country that helps support patients within the country and those visiting us from abroad. The UAE is home to renowned healthcare organisations such as Mayo Clinic, in collaboration with SSMC, and Cleveland Clinic, both in Abu Dhabi. Having these big names helps the economy by attracting medical tourism to Abu Dhabi,” he said.

Al Marzooqi added that as a data-focused company, G42 Healthcare is looking at ways to analyse data to benefit that patient journey more sustainably. “We are looking at how we can leverage the strengths of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and health exchange information systems to support the overall healthcare ecosystem.”

He concluded: “We are working towards bringing the latest technological advancements and streamlining patient journey through AI and machine learning. We are quite ambitious, and our vision is to redefine and impact healthcare, not just within the UAE, but also regionally and globally.”

This article appears in Omnia Health magazine. Read the full issue online today.

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The effect of climate change is prevalent worldwide and can have a detrimental impact on human health. Healthcare facilities are often energy-intensive enterprises and contribute inadvertently to climate change, leading to respiratory and other illnesses. Reportedly, hospitals contribute towards 4 per cent of the world’s carbon footprint, and there is an increasing need to bring this number down. By moving towards carbon neutrality, the industry can play a leadership role in advocating for a healthy and sustainable future.

In an interview, Dr. Fatih Mehmet Gul, Chief Executive Officer, Fakeeh University Hospital, said: “We cannot damage the environment while trying to heal people. Because the more we damage the environment, the more people’s health will be affected. Therefore, as healthcare organisations, we cannot be the cause of damaging the health of our populations.”

Dr. Fatih Mehmet Gul

He shared that Fakeeh University Hospital is leading the way in sustainability. Its hospital building, located in Dubai Silicon Oasis, is the first to have been awarded the Gold LEED certificate. The hospital has also released Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports annually since 2009 and participates in several environmental and social projects to promote sustainability. Furthermore, it is reportedly the only private hospital in the world to have joined the Terra Carta initiative led by Kings Charles III. The initiative is a global proposition that provides a roadmap to 2030 for businesses to move towards a sustainable future.

Dr. Mehmet Gul stressed that technological advancements today also pave the way for hospitals to become more sustainable and enhance patient outcomes. It empowers healthcare practitioners to make informed clinical decisions and diagnoses and offer suitable treatment options.

Recently, Fakeeh University Hospital signed partnering agreements with health tech enterprises such as Symed, GE Healthcare, Abdul Lateef Jameel Health, Baxter, Philips, and Emitac Healthcare Solutions to enhance its commitment to benchmarking smart healthcare in the region.

He concluded: “Healthcare is one of the industries that creates a huge amount of data every single day. This data will only be helpful and useful for us if we find ways to leverage it effectively. With the high adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, we can finally make this data usable and offer patients better services. The future is exciting!”

This article appears in Omnia Health magazine. Read the full issue online today.

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The Dubai Science Park, part of the TECOM Group PJSC, is home to several companies specialising in the sciences, energy, and environmental sectors. It has been instrumental in creating a science-focused ecosystem in the emirate.

In an interview, Marwan Abdulaziz Janahi, Senior Vice President, Dubai Science Park, highlighted that about 60 per cent of the Dubai Science Park’s community includes companies operating in the healthcare sector. The community acts as the operating base for many pharmaceuticals, biotech, medical devices, and digital health firms.

He said: “Today, it is fascinating to see how digital health is making an impact on all aspects of healthcare, right from treatment and diagnosis to hospital management. This disruption is taking place right now and will continue to play a bigger role, thanks to the increasing availability of data. Therefore, it is essential to have one unified source of data.”

One of Dubai Science Park’s key focus areas is manufacturing. For instance, the Park is currently home to a pharmaceutical manufacturer, Janahi shared. But the Park has also seen an increasing demand for manufacturing vaccines and injectables.

Janahi explained: “With manufacturing, creating a base is essential. Even if you start with a simple product, like a tablet, you can always add it to your manufacturing base. So, for example, in our facility, we have a company specialising in manufacturing inhalers, and they can ramp up production as and when needed.”

Marwan Abdulaziz Janahi

He further stressed that while the business hub of the UAE may appear small when compared to its regional counterparts, it is the gateway to some of the world’s major markets. “Manufacturing is a long-term investment. Both Emirates and Etihad have made extensive investments in cold chain and special handling of pharmaceuticals, which offers a global reach for companies,” he added.

Another factor that makes the UAE an attractive business destination is the launch of the golden visas. “The UAE has always been an inclusive society, and I have always been an advocate of talent retention and acquisition,” said Janahi. “Also, scientific discoveries take a long time to reach the market as many research and clinical trials occur behind the scenes. Now, thanks to the golden visa and other initiatives, talent from around the world is coming to Dubai with a longer-term mindset.

He concluded: “The UAE is renowned as a market opener with people from all over the world coming here to discuss how to enter new markets and get access to products from other regions. I think the country’s next growth phase should focus on creating value and intellectual property (IP) from the UAE. We need to create an entire ecosystem, from academia to investors.”

This article appears in Omnia Health magazine. Read the full issue online today.

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The economic burden of diseases in the GCC region is estimated at over US$50 billion, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE accounting for the most, at US$24.5 billion and US$11 billion, respectively. With the focus of governments to promote and ensure the well-being of residents, there has been a marked increase in healthcare expenditure over the years, yet the burden of diseases leads to a productivity loss of nearly US$18 billion annually.

According to a report by Alpen Capital, the healthcare expenditure in the GCC is projected to increase to US$104.6 billion in 2022, a CAGR of 6.6 per cent from 2017, which was also compounded by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As one of the first regions across the world to recover from the aftermath of the pandemic, there has been a rigorous and concerted focus on enhancing healthcare delivery standards through multiple pathways, including the integration of advanced technology solutions and embracing digitisation.

New trends have evolved, such as the demand for telemedicine quadrupling in volume in the UAE, while the private sector is focusing on cost optimisation and reassessing business plans and projections.

There is also increased emphasis on promoting preventive care and addressing the rising incidence of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, cancer and cardiovascular diseases, which accounted for direct and indirect costs of more than US$67.9 billion in 2022.

Value-based healthcare as a pathway to better healthcare

One of the pathways to building a robust, effective and cost-efficient healthcare ecosystem is pivoting to value-based procurement (VBP), which calls for a mindset change, as well as a commitment to building stronger foundations, starting with procurement.

With increased interest and a move to adopt the concept of value-based healthcare (VBHC) globally, it is important to first understand and define it. In essence, VBHC is about focusing more holistically on outcomes while providing cost benefits for all healthcare stakeholders.

The Harvard Business Review described it as ‘the strategy that will fix healthcare’ defining value as “the healthcare outcomes achieved that matter to patients relative to the cost of achieving those outcomes.”

VBHC, according to the World Health Organization, will entail transformation across three interconnected areas – delivery, funding and community (see Figure 1). The delivery aspect covers increased patient engagement, enabling truly integrated care that places patients at the centre of the network and delivering continuous, coordinated and multidisciplinary care.

Figure 1

The area of funding looks at creating value-based procurement, reimbursement and insurance models that encourage the best care to patients, while the third pillar focuses on education and empowerment within society to enable people to take an active role in their own healthcare.

The role of value-based procurement

One of the foundational pillars of VBHC is the need for VBP, which emphasises reduction in total costs throughout the entire patient pathway without compromising on the quality of care (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

According to the UK’s NHS Supply Chain, VBP is a means of “driving sustainable increased savings and improving patient outcomes” by working with multiple stakeholders that will help reduce waste and the number of products used, enable patients to move from inpatient to day care, reduce infection rates and strengthen operational productivity.

VBP, therefore, considers the price of a product or service, the outcomes for patients, the reduced total cost of care and the benefits for healthcare providers, hospitals, the healthcare system and society at large.

For governments, this means embracing coherent models on the funding, administrative, organisational, service delivery and clinical levels. National health systems stand to benefit from VBP by enabling the comprehensive delivery of quality services that meet the multidimensional needs of the population.

Hospitals stand to gain from improved patient outcomes and cost optimisation. In short, it opens doors for a holistic and integrated healthcare model where patients are also engaged and empowered by putting them in control of the care process. It also shifts the focus from mere cost optimisation to an emphasis on patient outcomes, which is central to delivering quality healthcare services.

Embracing value-based procurement

The journey towards successful VBP starts with taking a medium- to long-term view of the expected success factors and broadening the definition of value from immediate cost savings, which ultimately have finite benefits, to one were health systems create and incorporate tangible, measurable improvements to the patient pathway that may improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness and patient outcomes. VBP should be driven by collaboration and cooperation with public and private stakeholders. Finally, it must engage clinicians and key opinion leaders, with the VBP model being aligned with the aspirations of all stakeholders.

VBP is not for the short term but is a proven, sustainable approach in which the impact of a service, patient outcomes, reduced costs of care and improved patient care are prioritised. Driven by data and focused on outcomes, VBP will play a transformational role in shaping the future of the region’s healthcare sector.

Brian Mangan is the Value-Based Procurement (VBP) Project Lead for the National Health Service (NHS) Supply Chain, UK, and Dr. Sara Al Dallal is the founder and first president of the Emirates Health Economics Society and Specialist at Dubai Health Authority.

This article appears in Omnia Health magazine. Read the full issue online today.

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Over the past few years, we have witnessed growth in applications of AI and data science in healthcare. For instance, the technology of sensors and advanced testing is becoming sophisticated, giving rise to non-invasive wearables that can extract micro portions of essential data points in real time. This technology is being applied for analysing biomarkers, including biomarkers of longevity.

Among the many medical domains that boast panels of well-developed biomarkers, the most representative example is oncology. The last decade has altered the face of cancer care, largely due to the advancements in the field of oncology biomarkers. Once considered almost a death sentence, most cases of cancer today can be managed and even treated thanks to decades of progress culminating in highly accurate sets of biomarkers for diagnosis and treatment.

The advent of biomarkers also supports other healthcare domains that deal with early-stage pathologies which have not yet evolved into diseases. This field of early-stage diagnostic and preventive medicine is becoming more personalised. For example, AI algorithms can analyse a patient’s genetic data to identify biomarkers that indicate an increased risk for certain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or cardiovascular disease. With this information, physicians can then recommend preventive measures to delay the onset of these conditions, thereby extending lifespans.

The well-established field of early-stage diagnostics, being integrated with well-developed biomarkers of disease, provides a major platform for applications of precision medicine. With the emergence of biomarkers for age-related diseases and ageing, healthcare professionals can identify and intervene in what accelerates humanity’s biological clock.

Combining the power of AI, data science and ageing biomarkers, ‘longevity medicine’ was born, unlocking a new frontier in AI-driven personalised preventive care. Such technologies can bring us closer to what precisely is affecting health in a negative way, providing those experiencing health issues with a guide for what needs to be eliminated or neutralised to promote a healthy and vibrant ageing process.

Distinguished yet connected to medicine, longevity biomarkers represent the most recent and modern field that completely relies on data science and AI. While ageing biomarkers are used to detect and determine what accelerates ageing and age-related diseases, longevity biomarkers help identify exact methods to extend healthy longevity.

The longevity biomarkers arena is now expanding, with more companies joining the race and harnessing data science and AI to power cutting-edge applications. Longevity biomarkers bridge the gap between personalised preventive longevity medicine and data science-driven healthy living, offering the potential to unlock a long life lived in greater health. Despite its infancy, this field of science and technology is experiencing unprecedented growth.

AI-driven data science technologies designed to identify what is enhancing healthy longevity in a personalised way, are referred to as ‘AI for healthy longevity.’ This approach is revolutionising our quest for healthy longevity, separating hype from reality. It can also safeguard us from baseless anti-ageing trends. It will be invaluable in guiding us to practical strategies proven to achieve long-term well-being.

At the intersection of ‘longevity medicine’ and ‘AI for healthy longevity’ sits a powerful force known as ‘precision health’. This approach will modernise healthcare, wellness and well-being by delivering a personalised longevity blueprint for any individual and could truly keep us healthier for longer.

Additionally, ‘precision health’ could be extended towards a partnership between AI-driven longevity and healthcare InsurTech, where insurance technologies are combined with predictive personalised health analytics to provide better health risk assessment outcomes.

While there is still ample room for improvement in these AI-driven medical fields, it is exciting to see the strides that have been made so far. By embracing technologies, medical professionals can deliver better care while extending life expectancies. It won’t be long before we rely on AI-based techniques to ensure healthy lives well into old age.

Dmitry Kaminskiy is the General Partner of Deep Knowledge Group

This article appears in Omnia Health magazine. Read the full issue online today.

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The UAE healthcare sector is unique. In 2022, the country received more than 40 per cent of all applications from health professionals seeking to be licensed in the GCC despite only making up 17 per cent of the GCC’s population. How is this possible?

Currently, we have a situation whereby a significant demand for medical professionals is being met by a corresponding desire for such professionals to live and work in the UAE. Some key factors that we believe are contributing to this include:

• Ongoing UAE government support and investment in driving the growth and success of the healthcare industry.
• Strong and growing demand in several niche healthcare segments is driving additional investment in new facilities and expansion of the facilities already in operation.
• Shortages in the supply of certain medical services in other proximate countries, which is driving the growth of medical tourism in the UAE due to its world-class facilities and specialised health services.
• The UAE’s reputation as a safe country, combined with dynamic visa developments, is attracting healthcare professionals.

As an identified critical sector, the UAE Government has highlighted access to high-quality healthcare as a core pillar of its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A driving force in the sector’s expansion has been increased investment by government bodies and private organisations combined with a focus on innovation.

The UAE has become an obvious strategic focus of private healthcare organisations looking for investment opportunities and growth in the region. As a result, the UAE has seen significant investment in the health sector, driven by strong consumer demand for health services, especially in niche segments such as mental health, women and children, and primary care, combined with the relative ease of establishing and expanding in the UAE. Such investment is essential to enhance the country’s capabilities in meeting the ever-increasing demand for healthcare services and will enable a more effective, scalable, and comprehensive healthcare system for the UAE’s residents and visitors, as well as a healthy competitive landscape that fosters growth.

The UAE has also become a hub for healthcare innovation in the region. There are several premier healthcare conferences and trade events, which enable ideas, partnerships, innovations, and collaborations throughout the healthcare industry, serving as a further catalyst for growth and development. In 2023, for example, Arab Health in Dubai had over 3,300 exhibitors, and the event attracted more than 63,000 healthcare professionals.

All of this focus and investment is paying off. According to World Population Review, the UAE held the top rank among all GCC countries for healthcare using the Legatum Prosperity Index and ranked in the top 50 globally. In addition to dedicated healthcare hubs, the UAE’s private and public hospitals and clinics feature state-of-the-art technology, facilities, and specialised treatment centres that provide dedicated services, such as fertility treatment and orthopaedic centres. This not only serves strong domestic demand but also makes the UAE an extremely attractive medical tourism destination.

To fuel and sustain the growth in the industry, the UAE healthcare sector must attract and retain a significant number of medical professionals from countries around the world, which it is achieving based on the application data. This is not purely because the UAE is seen as a safe, inclusive country with a very high quality of life for expat professionals. It is also due to the UAE’s continuing commitment to making it easier for expatriate professionals to obtain visas, migrate and settle in the UAE. The hugely successful Golden Visa scheme is just one of the many initiatives that are helping achieve this.

What’s next for UAE healthcare?

The UAE’s proven agile, swift approach to technological change will only strengthen its global position in the healthcare market and, ultimately the effectiveness of patient care. Access to health screenings, vaccinations, and healthy lifestyle programmes are all part of the current fledgling preventative care landscape.

Telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, and health applications to continuously track health and lifestyle choices are already popular among certain demographics.

As Artificial Intelligence becomes more advanced and accepted, personalised prevention plans will interface with more accurate data analysis to identify trends and patterns in disease and illness prevention, resulting in a 24/7 wellness support, medtech-based ecosystem becoming an integral part of the industry and people’s daily lives.

These advances in healthcare result in the “patient first” approach, no longer only starting when a person walks through a medical facility door. Instead, the patient will have access to healthcare professionals (real and virtual) around the clock, based on their needs, for full spectrum preventative, illness and medical care.

One of the key drivers of the ongoing innovation and growth in the UAE healthcare sector will be securing high-quality, qualified medical professionals to support the rapid advancements in consumer demands and technology.

As a partner for government bodies, we look forward to continuing to support the UAE Government to deliver services that are critical to achieving these outcomes, including the verification of such medical professionals’ credentials as they seek employment, in this globally unique UAE healthcare sector.

Tony Fargher is the CFO of The DataFlow Group

This article appears in Omnia Health magazine. Read the full issue online today.

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Imagine a decade from now, you put on your augmented reality glasses or contact lenses, and when you look in the mirror in the morning, it will show you not just how your health is in the present day but also offer a glimpse at the future. Depending on your smoking habits or diet, it will give you a personalised health score, maybe even an early check engine light and offer guidance to help optimise your health and wellness. 

But in reality, today, the healthcare model still revolves around reactive sick care, where most of the healthcare data is collected in small fragments, either from a visit to the primary care doctor or the emergency room. However, the arrival of healthcare applications in the metaverse is bringing together the ability to leverage more continuous data, for instance, through wearables. Integrating this data into the workflow of care will offer a complete picture of how patients, consumers, clinicians, health systems, and regulators can move towards a preventative model to improve healthcare around the world.

Discover more about managing healthcare data in the metaverse era in our latest eBook

In an interview, Daniel Kraft, MD, Founder & Chair, NextMed Health, shared: “Thanks to the advent of the metaverse, or as I like to call it, “med’verse”, we have the opportunity to reshape and reimagine the near and more distant future of health and medicine, and everything from prevention, and health span, to early diagnostics, to new forms of therapy to even public health. The metaverse could take the form of an avatar we meet with in the virtual reality (VR) world. Or it could be the music, diets or meditation that nudge us to make healthy decisions or preventative systems that can detect complex diseases at an early stage.” Excerpts:

How does the digital twin concept interconnect with the metaverse?

I like to think about the digital twin in the metaverse as a tool that will allow a patient to provide a mirror to their health data when interacting with a chatbot, clinician, nutritionist, or public health worker. Through this data, healthcare professionals will have real-time information and a deeper understanding of the patient. They can use the digital twin model to simulate and optimise healthcare journeys, just like Google Maps, which offers hyperlocal information. The digital twin component for the metaverse could, for example, look like a patient’s mother or doctor and speak to them in a voice that helps motivate them. The digital twin would know a patient’s medical history, so when they ask a question about abdominal pain, it would recommend medication and help clinical teams choose the right therapies. The digital twin model is still in its early days. But healthcare, in general, still follows the one size fits all approach, and most doctors prescribe the same drug and dose. Therefore, this emerging metaverse that meets the digital twin concept will be one model that’s always learning and can drive proactive, personalised care anywhere and provide better health outcomes.

Daniel Kraft, MD

What are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to the adoption of the metaverse?

One of the biggest challenges is training new clinicians, doctors, nurses, and pharmacists of the future to enter this new age. There are often cultural challenges, particularly with asking physicians to change how they do things. I think of the metaverse less as a fantastical, augmented virtual extended reality component but more as a solution that can guide surgeries and enable medical education. All the data gathered from our wearables will help offer actionable insights to drive smarter, more personalised care. But how do you plug in the metaverse? How can doctors prescribe a digital therapeutic or an app? I have recently built a platform called Digital.health, where we have over 2500 companies and solutions. Some are metaverse and VR related, while others are digital therapeutics you might prescribe for smoking cessation, diabetes management or mental health. Part of the metaverse fixture is the ability to find and match a lot of these new digital, virtual and augmented tools. So, the clinician and their patients can use them and integrate them into their incentives, workflow and payment models. For instance, Apple Watch health data must tie back to a doctor in some way so that they can see why a patient’s sleep has changed or if their vital signs show a problem. The role of the metaverse is to be able to help synthesise, with the help of AI and machine learning, all these new forms of data and make them useful.

Furthermore, part of the challenge is to get out of silos and not only think about the metaverse, robotics, AI or gene therapy but see what’s here now and connect the dots and the people and the ideas to catalyse that future faster. There is a famous quote, “The future is already here, just not evenly distributed”. The trick is to translate that future faster today and collaborate with innovators, technologists, hospital systems, and investors worldwide.

When do you see healthcare in the metaverse becoming mainstream?

The launch of Apple’s virtual reality glasses sometime this year will push us closer to adopting the metaverse in healthcare. It can augment the clinician to look at radiological data, guide a procedure step by step, or help patients see their behaviours and integrate physical therapy or cognitive exercises. The metaverse has a broad possibility, including how we will enter virtual worlds, interact with clinical teams, and offer hybrid care. We still need in-person care and virtual care. Still, there is a place in the middle where we will interact with our health, not just data, but information about our virtual healthcare teams and environment, to uplevel all of us to do better self-care and to better leverage data, insights and knowledge at the bedside.

This article appears in Omnia Health magazine. Read the full issue online today.

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Abu Dhabi was recently named the safest city in the world for 2023, for the sixth year in a row. The Emirate’s success has been evident, especially in its response to the COVID-19 public health emergency, which was praised globally. The UAE’s capital saw seamless integration between health and non-health entities and quickly adopted new technologies, significantly supporting the public health response.

At the forefront of the UAE’s pandemic response was HE Dr. Farida Al Hosani, the Executive Director of the Infectious Disease Sector at the Abu Dhabi Public Health Center (ADPHC). During the peak of the crisis, she became a familiar face, updating UAE’s population on the pandemic’s developments and safety measures. She is also the first Emirati woman to join World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework Advisory Group. In an interview, she stressed that public health is not only the responsibility of health entities but also that of the private sector and other non-health entities, as their actions could create certain implications for society.

Dr. Farida Al Hosani

“During the pandemic, having organised coordination between the different sectors helped us to respond quickly to the crisis. I hope this collaboration will continue to develop to ensure emergency preparedness and response for future health emergencies,” she shared.

When asked about emerging public health trends, HE Dr. Al Hosani highlighted that technology is pivotal, especially in point-of-care testing and faster diagnosis of different diseases. This is evident in radiology, with automated readings becoming available for chest X-rays, Tuberculosis (TB) screening, and genetic sequencing for certain infectious diseases, which started with COVID-19 and has been expanded to influenza and RSV.

Furthermore, automation and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in different screening programmes, such as genetic testing for decision-making and prioritisation of different population groups, are gaining traction. The use of bioinformatics in different public health programmes is also increasing, leading to the creation of big data hubs.

She added: “Another emerging area is the metaverse. It is fairly new and still in the testing phase but rapidly developing. In the future, it could have great potential in creating awareness and education of healthcare professionals.”

However, one of the challenges that technology presents is workforce training, said HE Dr. Al Hosani. “We need public health personnel to have, for example, bioinformatics skill sets and training. There is a lot of shortage in this area, and we need to develop and train our employees. Also, the selection of the technologies needs to be validated using research and data to ensure that we are using the best technology to enhance our current system,” she concluded.

Combatting the challenge of climate change

Climate change and its effect on health are having a major impact on the burden of disease. Therefore, HE Dr. Al Hosani stressed it’s important for entities such as ADPHC to work hand in hand with environmental agencies and other stakeholders to study the effect of climate change on human health burden and have a mitigation plan for capacity building.

She said: “For example, dengue and malaria incidence is widening and affecting areas that have never encountered these diseases before. So, we must work together as a global society, leverage innovation and research, adopt the best environmentally friendly strategies, and work on a plan to tackle these emerging health issues.”

This article appears in Omnia Health magazine. Read the full issue online today.

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