Five future trends and insights that are shaping UAE health care ecosystem

Smart cities and digital intelligence will sustain resilient, future-ready environments. Smarter health care will improve the lives and health of citizens through advanced disease monitoring and surveillance, health risk mitigation, and connected health ecosystems that will deliver the right care to the right person at the right time. Smart health systems are foundational to smart cities.

Smart health systems are highly interconnected and operate as digital-first, integrating technology across the care continuum. The outlook in this trend highlights the key building blocks of a smart health system: the connections between people, the environment and infrastructure. As health care is delivered in a combination of physical and virtual spaces, everyone and everything is connected.

Importantly, all elements must work together in order to realize the full potential of the technologies that define the health industry of the future. Namely, AI, robotics, intelligent automation, next-generation telecommunications and edge computing. Upcoming trends include the metaverse of immersive virtual spaces that will remotely address clinical and behavioral health. Closely related to the metaverse is the concept of digital twins or a mirror world that replicates individuals, physical assets and processes. As AI continues to break new ground and mature, new forms including generative AI and large language models (LLMs) will bring new insights to health and care. This trend concludes with spotlights on emerging fields of digital humans and immersive reality.

Key trends

• Highly technologically advanced and interconnected, smart health ecosystems have the building blocks in place to take advantage of the full capabilities of new technologies that will become foundational to health care of the future.
• Immersive and experience-led technologies, including the metaverse and digital twins, bring entirely new ideas and spaces to health care.
• Health care ecosystems will become a predominant feature of the health sector and as they grow in sophistication will become increasingly specialized and defined by the care needs and health journeys of specific populations.

Smart, sustainable and future-ready

Smarter health care will improve the lives and health of citizens through advanced disease monitoring and surveillance, health risk mitigation and connected health ecosystems that will deliver the right care to the right person at the right time. To move into the future, health systems will need to become smart: highly technologically advanced and interconnected. The key building blocks of a smart health system are the connections between people, the environment and infrastructure within a unified intelligent, data optimized system of care.

An ecosystem is a complex web of interdependent enterprises and relationships that creates and allocates value. In health care, for example, ecosystems offer the promise of making health care experiences more personalized and complete, mixing and matching service offerings from a variety of providers into a comprehensive integrated whole. Health care ecosystems are expected to further evolve and in the future are likely to be defined by the needs of different populations and care journeys.

Much lies on the horizon for health care. As AI continues to evolve and mature, new forms of AI, including generative AI (a category of AI algorithms that generate new content in the form of images, text and audio) and LLMs that learn and can readily be applied in multiple situations will be applied to problems in health care. The metaverse is an emerging concept with applications being seen in clinical services and in operational matters but the full extent to which the metaverse will reshape the health sector has yet to be imagined. Some expect that the metaverse will be widely used in health care in the future; others consider it to be a technological fantasy. Opportunities envisaged for health care include improving clinical outcomes, clinical trials, improving the efficiency of service delivery and resource utilization, and in various communication channels. Non-clinical applications include research, drug and device development, education and training. Closely aligned with the metaverse, the digital twin is an emerging technology that is beginning to play a key role in health care. A mirror world is created when virtual places are linked to the real world via digital twins. Digital twins are a digital replica of a physical asset or process, that provides nearly real-time monitoring without being in close proximity. Generative AI and LLMs are attracting attention. LLMs are a new development in the maturity of AI and considered as foundation models – large pre-trained AI systems that can be repurposed across different domains with minimal effort.

What’s next?

To move from digital to smart for future value, the UAE should consider:

• Creating a regulatory environment and digital infrastructure that will attract manufacturers, investors and innovators to the UAE.
• Creating educational opportunities and employment pathways that will encourage and inspire UAE citizens for careers in the health and life sciences industries.
• Through innovative disruptive technology and the articulation of value proposition of quality health care, grow the UAE’s role as a regional medical hub and further develop its appeal as a global health tourism destination.

Digital-health technologies are transforming the very foundations of health and care with digitally-enabled care models including virtual delivery, remote monitoring and interactive person-centered tools. The outlook in this trend highlights the shifts in the system as new tech-enabled care models make anywhere anytime health care possible, in places closer to the patient — at home or in the community. Tech-enabled care models also open possibilities for innovative cross-border services, subject to legal and regulatory factors. As people become more health conscious, how we understand and think about health is changing. The notion of health care is transitioning from sick care systems to wellness, chronic care and population health. It is extending to include mental health, social determinants and environmental factors in a system of care that is diverse, integrated and seamless.

This outlook describes six shifts that are shaping the future of health care, which include changes in care location from hospitals to the home, the clinician’s role evolving to that of a guide as patients embark on their health journey, increasing personalization and the important role of data in driving better outcomes. This outlook concludes with spotlights on two emerging trends of wearables and digital-first.

Key trends

• Widespread adoption of virtual and digitally enhanced care models and non-traditional care locations.
• Digital-first, where digital is the default setting.
• Shift to proactive and wellness-oriented models.
• The patient journey is reimagined – technology and automation create integrated health care ecosystems designed to streamline the patient experience through the health care cycle.

Transforming health care

Digital technology has now been developed and applied to almost every aspect of health and care. The scope is extensive, ranging from self-care at home to outpatient care, emergency department management, virtual ICU, assisted image reporting and robotic-assisted procedures, through to public and population health.

Health systems of the future will be:

• Proactive rather than reactive
• Preventive with early intervention to prevent disease progression to crisis points
• Oriented to individuals who play a key role in optimizing their health

Virtual care is a profound change in the health care value proposition. Virtual care anywhere and at any time brings a host of new delivery choices and channels in addition to the more traditional episodic and facility-based care. This ranges from simple tele-visits to robust hospital-at-home models. The new future of tech-enabled health care requires health information architectures and infrastructures that support hybrid care models. Care delivery is changing, moving closer to where consumers are; health services will increasingly happen outside traditional health settings. There are six shifts shaping the future of health care:

• Point-of-care: hospitals to home
• Data ownership: institutions to patients
• Reference point: population to individual
• Clinician’s role: authority to guide
• Data analysis: buckets to big data
• Interactions: in-person to virtual

The health care model is shifting to preventive, personalized and participatory care. The health system of the future will be consumer-centric, wellness-oriented, able to deliver care outside the traditional structures of health systems and digitally connected. There will be a shift from the traditional reactive illness model to a customer-centric and needs-based proactive model. Medical tourism is one area that may benefit from crossborder telemedicine. Key focus for the UAE is encouraging individuals to seek care at home (preventing outbound medical tourism) but also to encourage inbound tourism from around the world. Smart health technology along with the human touch is transforming how care is organized and experienced. Optimizing experience will be a key differentiator in terms of long-term value for the health industry. Internationally, virtual and digitally enhanced care models are extensively deployed and cover a diversity of settings, clinical topics and outcomes.

What’s next?

To move to radically different approaches to care, the UAE should consider:

• Creating innovation opportunities through enabling environments that co-locate entrepreneurs from multiple sectors to foster development in the medical, wellness, biopharma and devices sectors.
• Educating and further growing the awareness of the citizens of the UAE about health, wellness and preventing the onset of chronic health conditions
• Creating the conditions that will support the successful scale-up of digital health innovations.

In recent years, awareness of setting policies and targets to reach Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and ESGs has increased significantly, and health care has not been immune. The outlook in this trend is primarily concerned with environmental sustainability, the health care workforce and the resilience and self-sufficiency of health care systems. This includes equitable access to health care, the economic sustainability of providers, and other players in the sector. It also includes expanding the concept of sustainability to include not just supply chain effects, but workforce well-being and the notion of creating shared value as a corporate responsibility for all players within an organization’s ecosystem. In the future, health care systems will need to be prepared for and respond to the changing natural environment. The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic raised awareness of the need to invest in sustainable and resilient health systems, especially in public health, to improve readiness for the next crisis.

The scale of the health sector means that health systems have a significant environmental impact. Globally, health care contributes around 5% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, sustainability is an important target in a rapidly changing health care environment. There is a strong connection between achieving a sustainable workforce and strengthening health care systems. Achieving a sustainable health care workforce requires increasing labor participation rates, focusing on resource utilization and developing strong future pipelines of workers equipped to work in the digital age. The pandemic exposed the many vulnerabilities in global supply chains and prompted the sourcing of more stable options to better address supply constraints and variable demand. The supply chain is a prime area for AI because of the sheer volume of products, invoices and contracts. Intelligent supply chains will streamline getting the products to consumers to help achieve just-in-time delivery and minimize waste. Finally, this outlook spotlights two key areas of environment-friendly hospitals and digitizing clinical trials through AI.

Key trends

• Climate-smart health responding to SDGs and ESG imperatives and retaining trust.
• Building workforce sustainability.
• Increasingly agile and resilient supply chains through transformative technologies.

Increasing momentum for sustainable health care

Increasing awareness has shifted public attention toward sustainability and related environmental, social and economic matters. As the momentum around sustainability has increased, its meaning has evolved to include practices that support ecological, human and economic health for thriving, healthy and diverse communities. In health care, this extends to such things as the well-being of patients, health care employees and the community.

In the future, health care systems will need to be prepared for, and respond to the changing natural environment. This calls for resilient services that are capable of dealing with the health impacts and operational consequences of environmental changes.

An environmentally sustainable health system improves, maintains or restores health, while minimizing negative impacts on the environment and leveraging opportunities to restore and improve it, to the benefit of the health and well-being of current and future generations. The scale of the sector means that the environmental footprint of health care systems is significant, using substantial quantities of resources and producing considerable waste.

Sustainability and transformative technology can play a major role in enhancing the health system’s economic, environmental and operating performance. The adoption of sustainable practices has been found to be successful in reducing costs across the value chain of health providers. In the case of workforce, challenge is to refine productivity, reimagine clinical services and harness the power of disruptive technologies and AI. Digitally-enabled supply chains and sustainable procurement practices underpin the shift in health care to decentralized and data-driven health care models. In particular, using predictive analytics to streamline getting the products to consumers and to help achieve just-in-time delivery and minimize waste. To ensure effective response, agility and resilience, health systems and organizations must look to the future of supply chain innovation.

What’s next?

To enable sustainability and transformative technologies, the UAE should consider:

• Creating a favorable policy environment that leverages incentives for ESG for a sustainable health system.
• Building a sustainable workforce through encouraging local citizens to acquire health industry skills and competencies and to support the development of new health workforce groups including data analysts, data scientists and epidemiologists.
• Building system resilience to predict and respond to emerging epidemics.

Conclusion

The future of health care is rapidly evolving with technological advancements shaping a digital landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this transformation, and the shift towards participatory, connected, and technology-driven health systems is irreversible. Patients will benefit from novel therapies, greater control and input into their care. The health care workforce will rely on new skills and care models, while technology alleviates burdens and optimizes resources. These trends pave the way for reimagining health care, aligning with UAE's vision of a digitally advanced knowledge economy. By investing in enabling infrastructure and partnering with international institutions, a vibrant health economy can be fostered. Change is inevitable.