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HealthTech Qatar
Connecting health innovation from Europe and elsewhere with the needs, institutions and opportunities of Qatar and the wider GCC.
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The Gulf
Precision medicine, diagnostic sovereignty and health innovation across the six GCC states, with selected wider Gulf context.
I first visited the Gulf in 2018 to attend Arab Health in Dubai. Like so many others, I arrived drawn by the prospect of wealthy nations willing to buy what I was selling at the time: liquid biopsies for precision oncology. I do not know what I expected, but I was not prepared for the modernity, the ambition or the determination to build nations capable of shaping the future of medicine. I was hooked.
I later realised that these ambitions extended far beyond Dubai. Across the region, countries are pursuing ambitious nation-building programmes, articulated through national visions in which healthcare is, in one form or another, a major pillar. Understanding those ambitions led me to conclude that the next step of precision medicine is going to be built in the Gulf. I dedicated Part IV of Precision Diagnostics: A Founder’s Journey to exploring how important elements of precision medicine, particularly its diagnostic foundations, could be built and deployed across the Gulf.
National visions
Programmes for national transformation
Saudi ArabiaSaudi Vision 2030View official vision →
United Arab EmiratesWe the UAE 2031View official vision →
QatarQatar National Vision 2030View official vision →
BahrainBahrain Economic Vision 2030View official vision →
KuwaitKuwait Vision 2035: New KuwaitView official vision →
OmanOman Vision 2040View official vision →
Iraq · Wider GulfNational Development Plan 2024–2028View official vision →
Although Iraq is not normally considered a Gulf country in the same political sense as the six GCC states, it has 58 km of coastline on the Gulf, wedged between Kuwait and Iran. I therefore include its development plan in this wider regional view. Iraq is also a country that makes me curious, as I explore in Iraq’s impossible predicament.
But if the Gulf has invested substantially in health infrastructure, genomics and precision medicine, infrastructure and research excellence alone will not produce lasting diagnostic capability. Scientific assets must be connected to clinical validation, regulation, manufacturing, procurement, adoption and venture formation. In The Import Condition, I develop this argument into an analysis of the Gulf’s diagnostic dependencies, a map of the opportunities available to the region and a set of practical programme proposals for building diagnostic sovereignty.
Books
Two books, one developing Gulf thesis
Precision Diagnostics: A Founder’s Journey
Part IV explores how elements of precision medicine, particularly its diagnostic foundations, could be built and deployed across the Gulf.
Explore the book →
The Import Condition
An analysis of the Gulf’s diagnostic dependencies, an opportunity map and a set of practical programme proposals for building diagnostic sovereignty.
Explore the book →I am now putting this thinking into practice through HealthTech Qatar, an independent, entrepreneur-led platform based in Qatar. HTQ connects health innovators in Europe and the wider global health-technology ecosystem with healthcare institutions and strategic priorities in Qatar and the GCC, helping regulated technologies secure the partnerships, validation settings and implementation pathways required for regional deployment.
Selected Gulf analysis
Four essays that establish the central arguments developed across my Gulf writing.
01
Why the GCC Is Suddenly on My Precision Medicine Map
Why the Gulf’s combination of ambition, infrastructure and capacity for coordinated execution could make it an important centre for precision medicine.
Read the essay →02Magnificent Hospitals, Empty Supply Chains
Why world-class clinical infrastructure remains exposed when diagnostic instruments, reagents and essential consumables must be imported.
Read the essay →03Why the GCC Needs a “Gulf CE Mark”
A proposal for a shared regulatory pathway capable of turning six fragmented national markets into a more coherent regional market for diagnostics.
Read the essay →04The Localisation Trap
Why diagnostic sovereignty requires regional industrial coordination, specialisation and minimum national capabilities rather than six parallel supply chains.
Read the essay →Writing connected to The Gulf
The complete archive of writing connected to this place.