Dubai Health Authority to adapt AI-powered remote patient monitoring tech

Dubai’s healthcare regulator announced earlier this week that it will be working on enhancing its MedTech capabilities, emphasizing AI-powered remote patient monitoring.

The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) is currently collaborating with homegrown startup Enpy – which specializes in medical artificial intelligence (AI) – to use its AI-powered device for remote patient monitoring. According to the startup’s listing on LinkedIn, they describe themselves as “on a mission to accelerate the world’s access to preventive healthcare.”

“We are keen to use the latest health technologies with an aim to better both healthcare management and patient-centered care,” Manal Taryam, CEO of DHA’s Primary Healthcare unit, was quoted as saying, adding that “over the last few years, we have focused on home patient monitoring especially for elderly patients. We have also swiftly foraged into telemedicine.”

Taryam highlighted that the use of this technology for remote patient monitoring is of particular importance in the current healthcare landscape of the world, while expressing the DHA’s keenness to continue collaborating with firms locally and globally to implement healthcare technologies after an evidence-based analysis.

The announcement came during the ongoing UAE Innovation Month 2021.

Enpy’s AI-powered product has been described as an “all-in-one, non-invasive medical device” that is able to be paired with a smartphone or tablet. It then monitors important information, such as vital signs to make better medical decisions.

A recently published report by Ernest & Young, noted that most of the health and service (HHS) organizations in the UAE plan to invest further in digital technology and data solutions after “seeing their value and increasing importance during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

According to the report, the UAE is currently leading the way in the uptake of digital technology and data solutions recently. It is believed that the UAE was able to scale up technology more rapidly due to “its sound technological infrastructure and investments in cutting edge technology such as AI in recent times.”

EY reported that 53 percent of UAE respondents from HHS organizations said that they planned on further investing in these advanced solutions over the next three years.

“The actions of (global) regulators, payers, service providers, vendors and service users will become increasingly important, and will pave the way for increased usage of digital technologies and analytical tools within HHS organizations around the world,” Mohammad Sear, MENA Digital Government and Public Sector Consulting at EY, said in the report.