What overarching vision do you have for American Hospital Dubai and what key strategies outline the path towards realising this vision?
My vision for American Hospital Dubai is to accelerate its pace of healthcare leadership in the region. Healthcare leadership is about redefining the performance standards to meet the expectations of the people. Our doctors and medical staff are people and leadership is about supporting them to push the horizons of healthcare efficacy.
American Hospital Dubai is in a leading position for its innovation; AI-led medical care; robotics & complex surgeries; world-class healthcare facilities; centres of excellence; education & mentoring; and partnerships. To reach this, we based our purpose, growth, and progress on our healthcare ideology, which is for the people. We focused on innovation for people; technology for people; human expertise for people.
These are the new building blocks of healthcare efficiency and impact. Innovation helps improve patient outcomes through enhanced medical procedures. Technology makes innovation a reality and interconnects the healthcare processes to save time and money.
Human expertise is the glue that binds innovation and technology. Without it, we cannot deliver the best outcomes for our patients. Every healthcare disruption, from digital backbone, consumer-oriented healthcare to data harvesting and hyper-personalised care pivots on patient outcomes. All these roads lead to it.
My vision also includes expanding the circle of benefits. American Hospital Dubai’s American Hospital Care Network (AHCN) provides third-party management and manages other healthcare providers and facilities as a core function.
We are the first hospital within the Middle East to adopt this concept, and this will help other healthcare entities through the sharing of knowledge and mentoring for excellence in healthcare practices. It is one more facet of our for-people approach. Eventually, it expands the circle of benefits for the people who get quality healthcare from highly trained medical professionals.
What notable achievements has the American Hospital Dubai accomplished in 2023, and what are your goals for 2024?
2023 has been an extremely dynamic year for American Hospital. We have gone past many more milestones with our healthcare digital transformation strategy. Our AI transformation project and data lab led to many clinical, operational, and financial efficiencies, including lab automation, Cardiovascular Information Systems (CVIS), teleradiology, and digitisation.
Also, we partnered with Al Futtaim Health, to oversee the management of their aesthetic clinic and their HealthHub Clinics and Pharmacies. It is another step forward on our mission to share excellence practices. The collaboration will pave the way for expansions across the UAE, GCC, the MENA region, and Egypt.
American Hospital Dubai further consolidated its commitment to carbon footprint reduction by formally launching its sustainability policy this year. This integrates performance, measurability, and accountability. It’s an enabler to helping us become the region’s leading healthcare model in carbon reduction.
We are continually enhancing our intentionally designed patient experience. It means knowing your patient and building your care ecosystem around them. We are vigorously expanding our education arm, setting a new milestone with the robotic surgery train of 20 Emirati surgeons by 2024. We will continue to expand our medical technologies and partner with the best minds in the world in critical areas like imaging and robotics, keeping pace with innovations to bring the latest medical care to the UAE and the region.
Considering Dubai’s notable growth across sectors, what are some insights into the new initiatives undertaken by American Hospital Dubai to align with this surge?
Healthcare is increasingly becoming a part of a hyper-converged infrastructure. American Hospital is integrating with asset synergies across the spectrum to accelerate overall progress. These assets include technology & digital, knowledge, infrastructure, capabilities, education, and human resources.
Education is a core competency in a knowledge economy such as the UAE. The UAE is among the most competitive education domains in the GCC. American Hospital Dubai has consciously transformed into a teaching community to support this vision, promote medical knowledge, and enhance medical professionalism.
Our vision is to assist in developing the next generation of healthcare leaders. We promote medical education to help the region have the highest patient care, research, and education standards. We set up the American Hospital Academic Institute (AHAI), the education arm of American Hospital Dubai, to develop talented medical staff in the UAE, training more than 400 professionals.
The Institute is affiliated with leading medical schools in the UAE, such as the University of Sharjah, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, and Gulf Medical University, empowering fresh talent to build a career in the healthcare sector. We have also instituted a Service Excellence Programme to deliver comprehensive healthcare management encompassing patients, visitors, and stakeholders because we believe in enhancing the entire care ecosystem.
UAE and medical professionals
American Hospital Dubai established the first General Medical Council, a GMC approved appraisal and revalidation service outside the United Kingdom for UK-licensed medical doctors who want to practice overseas while maintaining their GMC registration and license. We recognise the need to support UK-licensed medical doctors in maintaining their status while working in the UAE, GCC, MENA region, Asia, or elsewhere.
AI could contribute to almost 13.6 percent of UAE’s GDP by 2030, according to a PwC report. The UAE is aiming for a high AI literacy. Its 2031 National AI Strategy is a far-reaching objective that includes core research, AI-led breakthroughs across the board, and more. American Hospital Dubai launched the region’s first AI-led research centre in 2020 in collaboration with Cerner.
We are in the new era of predictive medicine and value-based healthcare delivery. Also, the UAE’s medical robotics market is estimated to touch $182 million by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 14.2 percent from 2020 to 2025. American Hospital Dubai’s Centre of Excellence in Robotic Surgery (COERS) has performed more than 1,500 robotic surgeries, and we are training 20 Emirati surgeons in robotic surgery by 2024.
We are the region’s first private healthcare facility to earn accreditation from the US-based Surgical Review Corporation (SRC). We have partnered with Robotic Surgical Systems (RSS) and UK-based CMR Surgicals to set up the region’s first robotic surgery training hub and educational academy.
The UAE and medical tourism
The UAE medical tourism market is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 8.7 percent over the next 10 years, reaching a value of $2.2 billion by 2033. We are partners in UAE’s vision to be one of the world’s top medical tourism destinations. Around 2020, medical tourism accounted for just 7 percent of American Hospital Dubai’s business. We resolved to increase it to 45 percent.