By Dr. Walid Abbas Zaher, Saudi scientist and GCC Advisory Board Member at Innovaccer;
and Akhter Hemayoun Mubarki, General Manager, Innovaccer

In our conversations with healthcare leaders across the region, we consistently hear the same story expressed in different ways. A clinician trying to manage a complex diabetic patient only to discover their lab results are locked in another system. An insurer struggling to reconcile records to comply with government mandates, redirecting resources that could otherwise be devoted to patient care. A hospital CIO is frustrated that their AI pilot looks great in a demo but can’t move into day-to-day workflows because the data just isn’t there.

These are not failures of intent. On the contrary, the GCC is full of some of the most ambitious healthcare leaders we have ever met. The vision is bold. Investments are real. Programs like Malaffi, Nabidh, and NPHIES are proof that the region wants to leapfrog into a future of connected, intelligent healthcare.

And yet the day-to-day reality still reflects the need for improvement. Not because people don’t want to change, but because the underlying digital foundation is not yet optimal to support that change.

One patient, three journeys

It starts, as healthcare stories often do, with a patient. Let’s call her Layla.

But it doesn’t end with her.

Her frustrations ripple through her doctor’s office and into her insurer’s back office. What seems like a simple clinic visit in Dubai demonstrates the tremendous potential for healthcare innovation in the Gulf when supported by a strong digital foundation.

This is not a story about intent. The challenge is structural. We are building sophisticated programs – AI pilots, population health dashboards, value-based contracts on top of scattered, unstandardized data. It’s like trying to fly a plane before we’ve built the runway.

Let’s follow Layla’s day, and see how that truth reveals itself.

Layla’s labyrinth: The patient view
It’s early morning in Dubai. Layla, a diabetic mother in her 40s, scrolls through her phone, downloading a photo of her last lab report. The clinic she visited last week in Dubai doesn’t share data with the other specialist hospital in Dubai where she has an appointment today. If she doesn’t bring her results herself, she knows she’ll likely have to repeat the tests.

Sure enough, when the nurse calls to confirm her visit, Layla is asked the same questions she answered days earlier: family history, allergies, prior medications. She sighs. It’s not negligence. It’s the system.

Abu Dhabi’s Malaffi and Dubai’s NABIDH were built to unify exactly these kinds of records. In theory, Layla’s information should flow seamlessly within each system. In practice, those systems remain threads of a fabric that has yet to be fully woven.

The result? For Layla, a day off work, another fasting blood draw, and the quiet erosion of confidence in a system that promises digital transformation but delivers repetition.

Dr. Ahmed’s double take: The provider view
Layla meets Dr. Ahmed, an endocrinologist. He’s compassionate, thorough, and deeply committed to proactive care. But when he logs into his dashboard, he frowns.

The analytics pilot he’s part of is supposed to flag at-risk patients in real time. Instead, it churns out partial insights. Layla’s HbA1c results are missing. Her medication history is incomplete; some prescriptions show up in one feed, others don’t. Even her address appears outdated.

Dr. Ahmed knows the problem isn’t effort. He and his team are committed. The government is investing. The pilot itself is well-intentioned. Strengthening the data foundation will ensure these efforts achieve their full potential. Without standardized coding (ICD-10, SNOMED), reliable patient matching, and real-time integration, his dashboards have the potential to evolve into powerful tools for decision support.

This isn’t unique to healthcare. In manufacturing, companies that chase artificial intelligence without first unifying their data hit the same wall. Deloitte calls the solution a “Unified Namespace” – a single source of truth for machines and systems. Manufacturers who get it right see double-digit gains in efficiency and resilience. Those who don’t spend millions on pilots that stall. TechRadar reported recently that more than 60% of UK manufacturers failed to scale AI projects because their data wasn’t clean, contextualized, or ready.

Dr. Ahmed doesn’t need a Deloitte report to tell him that. He feels it every day when he clicks “refresh” and hopes for clarity, only to get cluttered.

Nour’s tightrope: The payer view
Several hundred kilometers away in Riyadh, the same problem wears a different face. Nour, a director at a major insurance company, stares at her claims team’s backlog. Line after line of duplicate claims, mismatched IDs, and missing lab results.

Her team spends weeks auditing submissions that should have been automated. She knows that at least 20% of these costs are redundant tests repeated because no one trusted the previous record. For insurers like Nour, gaps in the digital foundation translate into tangible costs. She can’t negotiate value-based contracts with providers because the underlying data isn’t traceable. The absence of a digital foundation translates into hard costs.

McKinsey estimates that GCC health systems could unlock $15–27 billion in value by 2030 through digital transformation. But without reliable, governed data, those numbers remain aspirations on a slide deck.

The common thread: A weak foundation
Three people. Three frustrations. One root cause.

Layla’s repeated tests, Ahmed’s broken dashboards, and Nour’s duplicate claims all trace back to the same thing: a healthcare system attempting to innovate without first securing its digital foundation.

This is not a question of intent. The UAE and KSA are investing billions in health technology from building the world’s largest virtual hospital (Seha in Saudi Arabia) to integrating national records (Malaffi, NABIDH, Riayati) and launching digital health strategies aligned with Vision 2030. With unification, governance, and intelligence activation, these initiatives can move beyond individual efforts to form the pillars of a truly cohesive national health strategy.

Providers still operate in fragmented data environments. A single network may run three or four different EMR systems or versions. Labs, pharmacies, and third-party health apps often exist outside the clinical data flow. Social determinants of health factors such as housing, transport, and obesity are rising in importance but remain barely captured in patient records.

This lack of a strong digital foundation leads to very real, everyday challenges:

• Disjointed care transitions: When a patient moves between a public and private hospital, their record often does not follow them, resulting in delays, duplication of tests, or gaps in care.
• Inefficient chronic care management: A diabetic patient’s lab results may sit in one system, while their medication adherence data lives elsewhere. Clinicians make decisions without the full picture.
• Costly administrative burden: Insurers and providers spend time and money reconciling records to meet national mandates like NPHIES instead of focusing on patient outcomes.
• Stalled AI and analytics: Leaders speak of AI-powered healthcare, yet without reliable, unified data, most AI pilots struggle to scale beyond demonstrations.

The cost of this fragmentation is immense. Not only does it increase the expense of delivering care, but it also erodes trust between patients, providers, and regulators.

​​What a digital foundation looks like
A true digital foundation isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t make headlines the way AI or robotics do. But it is the difference between pilots that stall and systems that transform.

​​It rests on three layers:

1. Data Transformation Layer: Unify the health signals

The GCC’s biggest challenge is its siloed systems. The Data Transformation Layer integrates data across primary care centers, specialty hospitals, labs, pharmacies, and even SDoH sources. Whether it’s a lab report, pharmacy record, or EMR note, this layer ensures that every health signal contributes to a single, unified patient record.

Impact:

• Prevents redundant tests and reduces costs.
• Enables clinicians to see the whole patient journey in real time.
• Provides a foundation for population health management and value-based care pilots.

2. Data Integrity Layer: Govern with confidence

Unifying data alone is not enough. The data must be trusted. This layer harmonizes and normalizes data using standards such as ICD-10, SNOMED, LOINC, and FHIR. It enforces GCC data localization laws (UAE Decree 45, Saudi PDPL) and provides traceability and consent controls.

Impact:

• Gives regulators confidence that patient data is compliant and secure.
• Enables “one person, one record” across borders and facilities.
• Provides smart hospitals and national systems with defensible governance from day one.

3. Intelligence Activation Layer: Turn insights into impact

Once data is unified and governed, intelligence can be activated. APIs expose longitudinal patient records for use in workflows. Clinical decision support tools identify care gaps in real time. Patient 360 dashboards give physicians, care teams, and administrators a full view of each patient.

Impact:

• Reduces clinician burden by surfacing actionable insights at the point of care.
• Powers value-based programs such as bundled payments and diabetic foot initiatives.
  Improves coordination across public and private providers through real-time, data-driven referrals.

Rewriting the story

Let’s replay Layla’s journey with this foundation in place.

She walks into her clinic in Dubai. Her physician sees her full history – labs, prescriptions, even SDoH risks. When she’s referred to Abu Dhabi, Dr. Ahmed opens the same record, complete with decision support nudges tailored to her risk profile.

Nour’s claims team receives a verified, traceable submission, with no duplicates.

No repeat tests. No missing dashboards. No wasted audits.

The impact isn’t just patient satisfaction. It’s measurable efficiency:

• Cost savings from avoided duplication.
• Better outcomes from proactive interventions.
• Trust among patients, providers, and regulators.

Lessons from other industries

Healthcare isn’t the first sector to face this problem.

• Banking: Decades ago, financial institutions realized fragmented data led to fraud, inefficiency, and mistrust. The solution? Core banking systems and interoperability standards. Today, you can withdraw cash in Riyadh even if your account is in Dubai because banks invested in shared digital foundations.
  
• Aviation: Airlines rely on digital twins and unified maintenance logs to keep planes safe. Imagine if every airline tracked engine repairs in isolation. The industry would be plagued by accidents. Instead, they share standardized, governed data across borders.
  
• Manufacturing: Smart factories only became “smart” once manufacturers invested in unified data platforms. The shift wasn’t AI-first it was foundation-first.
  

The parallel is clear: GCC healthcare is at the same inflection point.

A regional opportunity

The GCC is uniquely positioned to get this right. Unlike more fragmented geographies, Gulf nations can align national strategies, regulations, and investments. The Malaffi–Riayati integration in the UAE is a promising sign. Seha Virtual Hospital is a powerful prototype. And Vision 2030 places digital health at the heart of national growth.

But ambition must be anchored in infrastructure. PwC estimates that 30–40% of healthcare costs in the GCC are administrative, much of it caused by fragmented data. Even cutting that waste in half would free billions for frontline care and research.

The call to action
If there’s one takeaway from Layla, Ahmed, and Nour’s stories, it’s this: innovation without foundation is fragile.

Before AI, before analytics, before apps there must be trust in the data. And that trust can only come from a digital foundation strong enough to carry the weight of transformation.

The ambition across the GCC’s healthcare sector is clear, and the intent is shared by all involved – from policymakers to practitioners. The real challenge lies in building the right structures to support that vision. Once the foundation is in place, the Gulf won’t just catch up; it will leapfrog.

Layla’s sigh at the clinic is more than frustration. It’s a signal. When her experience changes, patients, providers, and payers alike will see and believe in the true transformation of the system.

The future of healthcare in the GCC will be shaped not just by how quickly we adopt AI or launch apps, but by the strength of the digital bedrock we build to support them.