In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the race to adopt meaningful artificial intelligence in healthcare is on, but certainly not through a single model or approach.
Two key hubs – the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and North Africa – are currently illustrating how healthcare systems across the region are pursuing distinct yet complementary approaches to AI implementation, ones that are shaped by differences in infrastructure, population scale, care delivery and public health priorities.
In the GCC, for example, countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among others, are building toward increasingly integrated AI-enabled healthcare ecosystems thanks to digital infrastructure and interoperability initiatives. In North Africa, organisations are focusing more heavily on practical deployments designed to address patient scale, workforce pressures, operational efficiency and access to care.
Zooming into those territories, no two countries within the GCC or North Africa are the same, resulting in even more variation in approach and requirements.
DIFFERENT STARTING POINTS, SHARED MOMENTUM
At present, healthcare providers across the GCC continue to experiment with a wide range of AI applications.
“There is a lot of experimentation and piloting,” said Ahmad Awada, innovations and digital health director at Mediclinic Middle East. “But where is it in adoption? Still in the very early stages.”
Among the areas gaining traction is ambient AI, Awada explained, designed to support clinicians through real-time documentation and clinical decision support during consultations.
“You will end up having assistive AI that helps the doctor during the whole consultation – not only improving documentation, but also prompting the doctor if something was missed,” Awada said.
He believes these capabilities could become particularly important in primary care, helping clinicians manage a broader range of conditions earlier and more holistically.
“If you are able to empower primary care and really scale it up, the benefit is huge,” he added, noting that AI could help standardise clinical decision-making and reduce variability across systems.
AI is also beginning to play a larger role in radiology and pathology, Awada said, with emerging systems capable of analysing scans for multiple potential conditions simultaneously and identifying patterns associated with future deterioration risk.
Meanwhile, in Egypt, adoption is progressing through a more operationally focused and use-case-driven model.
Amr Alashkar, chief information officer at Cleopatra Hospitals Group, said his organisation began a wider digital transformation journey several years before accelerating AI adoption.
“We started putting the framework and the first bricks in the transformation by 2017,” Alashkar explained.
That infrastructure later enabled targeted AI deployment across patient engagement, workflow automation and clinical support. The group has also integrated clinical decision support tools to assist physicians through imaging analysis, structured recommendations and faster access to patient histories across connected hospitals.
One example has been AI-powered patient engagement chatbots.
“When it first started, the contribution to the overall business of the group was not more than 1%,” Alashkar said. “Now, we reach 5-6% in overall booking of the outpatient services.”
While the GCC is increasingly focused on integrated AI ecosystems, Alashkar said healthcare organisations in Egypt and wider North Africa are often prioritising practical deployments that can support operational efficiency and scale across large patient populations.
“The opportunity there is because of the volume of patients,” he said.
FROM INFRASTRUCTURE TO IMPLEMENTATION
One of the clearest differences between the two regions lies in digital infrastructure and health data maturity.
In the GCC, investment in health information exchanges (HIEs), interoperability frameworks and national digital health strategies is creating a strong foundation for AI deployment.
“The UAE is highly proactive when it comes to innovation, with strong support from regulators to test and scale new technologies,” Awada said.
The policy environment is also accelerating this momentum. In April, the UAE government announced a national framework to deploy agentic AI across 50% of government sectors and services within two years, signalling strong national support for AI adoption.
Awada also highlighted the value of the region’s structured and diverse healthcare data. HIE platforms such as Malaffi and NABIDH are helping aggregate structured health data at scale, creating opportunities for predictive modelling and future AI development.
“The availability of structured, diverse health data makes the region very attractive for developing and testing AI solutions,” Awada added. “I strongly believe we will move from being just consumers of technology to a place where we are researching and developing technologies.”
In North Africa, healthcare organisations continue to rely more heavily on their own electronic medical records and internal systems while broader digital health infrastructure evolves.
Simultaneously, Alashkar asserted that Egypt’s scale creates a different type of AI opportunity, particularly in high-volume healthcare environments and underserved areas.
“There is the need for a structured approach in diagnosing and treating patients,” he said, pointing to AI-supported systems helping extend access to higher-quality care in rural and underserved areas lacking specialist expertise.
Both regions are investing heavily in broader innovation ecosystems. In the GCC, regulatory sandboxes and interoperability initiatives are helping attract AI developers and healthcare technology firms, while in North Africa, a growing startup ecosystem, increased private-sector investment, and expanded university programmes in AI, data science and healthcare informatics are supporting longer-term capability building.
TRUST, WORKFORCE & THE ROAD AHEAD
Despite growing investment and experimentation, both experts acknowledged that trust remains one of the biggest barriers to wider AI adoption in healthcare.
“People still trust people more than computers and technology,” Alashkar said.
Clinician adoption also presents challenges, particularly when new technologies are perceived as adding complexity rather than reducing workload, he explained.
Awada similarly noted that healthcare organisations are still trying to determine how to translate AI-enabled efficiency gains into measurable operational value.
Additionally, both identified organisational readiness, cost, infrastructure, data privacy, localisation requirements and the need for clearer AI strategies as ongoing barriers.
“AI is a very nice word,” Alashkar said. “But how to define the use case … this is very important.”
Ahmad Awada, innovations and digital health director at Mediclinic Middle East, and Amr Alashkar, chief information officer at Cleopatra Hospitals Group, will present more on MENA’s ecosystem at HIMSS Europe 26, scheduled for 19-21 May 2026 in Copenhagen.
