Middle East Summit Opening Keynote @ HLTHEurope 2024
The inaugural Middle East Summit, held at HLTH Europe in Amsterdam on June 20, 2024, brought together healthcare leaders, innovators, and stakeholders to explore the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape in Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East region. The summit aimed to showcase opportunities for European startups and companies in this dynamic market and highlight the region’s commitment to digital transformation, value-based care, and regulatory innovation.
Opening Remarks: Bridging Innovation Between Europe and the Middle East
Meshari Alwashmi, CEO and co-founder of AmplifyAI kicked off the summit by sharing his personal journey and the rationale behind hosting a Middle East-focused event in Europe. Alwashmi emphasised three key reasons for bringing these two regions together:
1. Increased market access
2. The rapid pace of change in the Middle East
3. A more agile regulatory environment
Alwashmi noted, “What we found there is that regulation was much quicker. The great thing about it is that a lot of the technologies in the world tend to move to the West… I believe we need more supporters of different regulatory systems to be able to approve these solutions and bring them to market sooner and help as many people as possible.”
Ali Hashemi, co-organizer of the summit, elaborated on the event’s purpose: “Today is really about exploring why European startups should consider the Middle East as a real fertile ground for execution, innovation, and partnership.”
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030: A Catalyst for Healthcare Transformation
Dr. Shabab Alghamdi, Secretary General of the Council of Health Insurance in Saudi Arabia, provided a comprehensive overview of the country’s ambitious healthcare transformation plans, which are aligned with the broader Saudi Vision 2030 initiative.
Dr. Alghamdi began by quoting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s vision: “The Middle East will be the new Europe, where we will try to perspire as a whole region to achieve our goal and to make it a very attractive region, and we collaborate with the whole globe.”
He outlined three main focus areas for Saudi Arabia’s healthcare system:
1. Creating a Vibrant Society: “We have to have a vibrant society and vibrant from all aspects and medical and healthy people and having a good health of people is our objective and our contribution to 2030.”
2. Thriving Economy: “How can we make sure the employer doesn’t suffer from high inflation and medical costs? So by adopting value-based healthcare, we give our society the best healthcare we can deliver and by also adopting value that we mean will be cost-effective healthcare system will try to control the inflation of healthcare costs.”
3. Ambitious Nation: “We have the best in class now in Saudi Arabia regarding connectivity between all industries. You will find everything in your app. Saudi Arabia today we have what we call unified medical records.”
Digital Transformation and Data-Driven Healthcare
A key pillar of Saudi Arabia’s healthcare strategy is embracing digital technologies and data-driven decision-making. Dr. Alghamdi highlighted the country’s progress in this area:
“We have a digital strategy we are proud of and that digital strategy every time I go to Healthcare conferences and value-based healthcare system, and I come to national Crucifer people are talking about data. We have the business data platforms are good because everything is connected.”
He emphasised the creation of a unified health information platform called “Naphies” (National Platform for Health Information Exchange Services):
“It’s one single platform, and we call it the Naphies because it’s the most precious thing… We think this is could be a goldmine where we can meet up and disappear, where we can bring innovation where we can share lessons learned with you guys.”
Key Initiatives and Achievements
Dr. Alghamdi shared several notable achievements and ongoing initiatives in Saudi Arabia’s healthcare sector:
1. Digitalization: “Our country established something called Digital Governmental Authority, where it mandates all industry to digitalise and we tested ourselves during COVID. We were really happy that we were ready for COVID through digitalisation.”
2. Unified Medical Records: “We are the only region over the globe. We have one platform where you can see all of your health records and also you can measure the cost of your healthcare and this is accessible and affected data governance.”
3. Value-Based Healthcare: “We are aiming to adopt all our interim measures for PROMs [Patient-Reported Outcome Measures] and that will help us to build the value-based payments. We have several insurance companies are getting rave today. They are working to have a contract with the provider where they are going to be performance-based.”
4. Traffic Safety: “We focus on traffic safety. And guess what we achieved our target for improving traffic safety in the last six years. Faster than we expect our mortality rate because of the focus on prevention and law enforcement has helped us to reduce mortality by 55% in six years.”
5. Healthcare System Restructuring: “We have what we call it the private health coverage. And we have something called also governmental coverage. And the governmental coverage is changing. We are now spinning off the whole governmental facility to be an independent from the regulators and the regulators to be regulated only. And the third pillar is we are creating a public payment system so we can create the check and balance between provider and payer.”
Opportunities for European Startups
The summit highlighted several areas where European healthcare startups and companies could find opportunities in the Saudi Arabian market:
1. Digital Health Solutions: With the country’s strong focus on digitalisation and unified health records, there is significant demand for innovative digital health technologies.
2. Value-Based Care Models: As Saudi Arabia shifts towards value-based healthcare, startups offering solutions to measure outcomes, improve efficiency, and enhance patient experience could find a receptive market.
3. Preventive Care and Population Health: Given the emphasis on prevention, companies focused on early detection, health monitoring, and lifestyle management may find substantial opportunities.
4. Data Analytics and AI: With the wealth of healthcare data now available through unified platforms, there is a growing need for advanced analytics and AI solutions to derive actionable insights.
5. Regulatory Innovation: The more agile regulatory environment in Saudi Arabia could allow European startups to bring their solutions to market more quickly than in other regions.
Conclusion: A Call for Collaboration
Dr. Alghamdi concluded his presentation with an invitation for increased collaboration between Saudi Arabia and European healthcare innovators:
“I promise you, you will see us more frequently in our conferences. You’ll see us more frequently and I can and will be making this experience available. To all of you.”
The Middle East Summit in Amsterdam served as a bridge between European innovation and the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape in Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East region. The event aimed to foster greater collaboration and knowledge exchange between these two dynamic healthcare ecosystems by highlighting the ambitious transformation underway and the opportunities it presents.
As Saudi Arabia continues its journey towards a more digitalised, value-based, and patient-centric healthcare system, European startups and companies have a unique opportunity to contribute their expertise and innovative solutions to this transformative process. The summit underscored the mutual benefits of such collaboration, promising a future of improved healthcare outcomes and economic growth for both regions.
