Future Economy Lab, a series of workshops was recently organized by Dubai Economy. The workshop was on healthcare industry and it highlighted the opportunities for public and private sector for collaborating and shaping healthcare sector in Dubai which is sustainable and smart. This is particularly important post Covid-19 pandemic. The session of Future Economy Lab was focused on ways Dubai can ramp up local healthcare growth, including the supply chains and improving digitalisation of healthcare services.

Dubai has seen increased demand for high quality healthcare services. This has specially increased through urban development, a growing population, high incidence of lifestyle diseases, increased medical tourism and mandatory health insurance. The Future Economy Lab hack provided an insight to work forward for Dubai’s healthcare sector. This included healthcare providers, pharma companies, medical equipment manufacturers and digital health service providers, while the pandemic is raging through and hence are emerging opportunities for economy and commercial expansion. 

The main objective of workshop was to bring stakeholders together from civil society, government and industry to focus on the challenge: ‘How might Dubai accelerate local healthcare industry supply chains & digitalisation?’ Participants discussed various challenges, opportunities and initiatives that will outline the future of Dubai’s healthcare model. This included healthcare opportunities that Dubai can profit from, requirements to transition from a traditional model to a futuristic approach, and top initiatives that Dubai can opt to build a smart healthcare framework.

The workshop participants were unanimously aggregate to reform Dubai’s healthcare service delivery models in order to be more responsive and proactive in addressing the new challenges. The challenges as discussed included the need to improve the caliber of the healthcare system in Dubai, addressing over billing of patients and payers, and transforming the doctor-patient relationship from visit-centric to essentially home-based.

The opportunity areas and solutions that were identified during workshop included increasing investments into medical research and development (R&D), enforcing an ethical framework, and hybrid healthcare. There was also identified a need to develop robust frameworks, regulations and policies around digital health, public-private partnership (PPP) models and healthcare manufacturing. Another growth opportunity was found to be in healthcare manufacturing – 80% of pharma/medical products are imported in Dubai and rest of the Middle East, which increased the healthcare costs.

Mohammed Shael Al Saadi, CEO Corporate Strategic Affairs in Dubai Economy said, ‘Dubai has great opportunities to capitalise further on the digitalisation of healthcare, and I am encouraged to see many ideas on how Dubai can be the test-bed for new digital healthcare innovation and new business models. This will contribute significantly to a future-ready healthcare and medical technology sector for the benefit of citizens and tourists alike. I thank all participants of the hack for their invaluable contributions.”

Dr. Ibtesam AlBastaki, Director Investment and Public Private Partnership Department in Dubai Health Authority said, “It was a fruitful interaction, with emphasis on the ‘Certificate of Need’ (CON) programme which enables, and ensures, the stability and sustainability of quality care, leading to improvements in the coverage for undersupplied services. The government and the private sector must continue to work together closely to develop initiatives in the healthcare sector, like CON, keeping access to specialised services and patient experience as priorities.”

The Future Economy Lab hacks are a part of ‘CovExit’ initiative which is aimed to map the COVID Exit recovery path and also identify new opportunities to shape existing and emerging sectors by 2030. The upcoming workshops in the series include topics like High-tech Manufacturing, Real Estate, Agritech and the Digital Economy.

WAM