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Abu Dhabi is rolling out new artificial intelligence tools across roughly 100 operating rooms as the emirate’s healthcare regulator — taking a more-is-more approach to patient data — looks to improve surgical outcomes and use predictive technologies to shape policy.
The Department of Health Abu Dhabi is connecting operating rooms across the emirate’s hospitals using Johnson & Johnson’s Polyphonic surgical technology platform. It is part of a years-long push to build what the regulator described as an AI-native healthcare system.
“We are not the classic, traditional ministry of health,” Dr. Noura Al Ghaithi, department undersecretary, told Semafor in an interview.
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Cameras and recorders will capture video and audio from the operating rooms, alongside patient data like imaging and monitor readings. The system will be deployed across hospitals run by Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, PureHealth, Mediclinic, and NMC Healthcare.
Initially, the platform is designed to be a learning tool: Surgeons can pull up recordings of their own procedures, share clips with colleagues, and analyze where they erred or did something well. Pre-operative team briefings, typically coordinated over WhatsApp or handwritten notes, can be digitized and stored in one place.
Longer-term, Peter Schulam, the chief scientific officer of MedTech at Johnson & Johnson, described a system capable of real-time guidance, similar to what an airline pilot has in a cockpit, with a navigation layer that can locate anatomical structures based on a patient’s file before a surgeon cuts, reducing the risk of accidental injury. Ultimately, the ambition is for a connected operating room where every device and data source communicates with a surgeon in real time. But for now, Schulam said, the goal is to get surgeons comfortable with the basics.
Abu Dhabi hospitals that otherwise compete for patients will share their operating room data under standards set by the Department of Health, which oversees how the information is collected, stored, and used.
“We might reach a point of recommending in clinical guidelines: certain procedures, do with approach A; certain procedures, you might need approach B,” Al Ghaithi said, adding that the regulator may also dictate the best time for certain surgeries, once there’s enough data to see if time of day affects outcomes. “We will start understanding why this patient recovered faster, and why the other patient didn’t.”
The department has already shown it will act on data, Al Ghaithi said, such as when it lowered the recommended age for breast cancer screening from 50 to 40 after it found cases appearing in younger women than existing guidelines anticipated.
Step Back
The UAE’s healthcare spending is among the highest in the Middle East, at around 5% of GDP and growing, according to the World Bank (though still far lower than what is spent in the US or the EU). Gulf states are beset by public health issues stemming from a high rate of obesity, like heart disease and diabetes, which has spurred countries like the UAE to overhaul healthcare systems to focus on prevention.
Data and AI are seen as a key in the UAE to advancing its aims. Patient records, genomic data, and clinical history are consolidated under Malaffi — Arabic for “my file” — a single health information source connecting more than 3,000 facilities across the emirate. The operating room data will add another layer.
Notable
- In another sign of the Gulf lining up for AI: Riyadh entertainment district Qiddiya — backed by Public Investment Fund — will use Google’s Gemini to monitor visitor behavior, spending, and movement patterns, Semafor reported.