By Matthew Brady 
Experts in AI innovation discussed AI’s impact on revolutionising care and improving patient outcomes at Arab Health 2025 through the inaugural one-day Digital Health & AI Forum. Held under the theme ‘Connected health solutions: Unlocking the AI and digital health potential’, the Digital Health & AI Forum highlighted how AI is becoming an essential tool in modern medicine.
Speaking during the forum, Dr. David Rhew, Global Chief Medical Officer and VP of Healthcare, Microsoft, said: “One example of how AI is enabling better patient care involves AI applied on retinal images to diagnose diabetic retinopathy and potentially other diseases, including cardiovascular, neurovascular, and ophthalmologic conditions. In addition, agentic AI has enabled automated image capture, meaning that image capture devices could potentially be placed in primary care clinics, retail stores, schools, and malls.”
Adopting AI requires overcoming barriers like workflow disruptions, Dr. Rhew continued. “If the AI slows the clinician down, adds more work for the clinician, or is not easy to use, clinicians will not adopt it. Conversely, AI that makes the clinician more efficient, reduces administrative tasks, and is seamless is likely to be well adopted.
“We are already seeing this with ambient clinician intelligence (ACI). ACI captures the conversation between a patient and a clinician, seamlessly converts the conversation into a clinician note and enables integration of the note into the electronic health record,” he added.
Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Ahmed Al-Khalifa, Project Director of the Supreme Council of Health, Bahrain, meanwhile offered insights into why a unified health data framework is needed for the GCC and how it would benefit citizens and healthcare providers across the Gulf countries.
He said, “We are witnessing the increased movement of GCC citizens within the region due to significant economic investment. Therefore, having accessible medical data becomes important for GCC citizens wherever they are. Healthcare relies heavily on health information in the provision of care, and having a unified health data framework is the first step to achieving this strategic goal.”
He also addressed the complexities of aligning GCC nations on a standardised framework, highlighting data privacy as a key consideration.
