Zaina brings Arabic-language AI to aesthetic medicine in Saudi Arabia and Qatar

Aesthetic medicine has a trust problem. There is no referral system, no insurer reviewing the decision, and no GP steering the conversation. A patient moves from curiosity to consultation guided almost entirely by content designed to sell them something. Zaina, a health AI platform developed by Spanish firm The Agile Monkeys, is trying to change that.

The platform launched publicly in August after operating quietly across Saudi Arabia and Qatar since earlier in the summer, where it has already been used by thousands of people researching aesthetic and plastic surgery procedures. It answers questions in Arabic, accounts for dialect differences across the Gulf, and does not push users toward any particular provider or outcome. The decision stays with the patient. Zaina just makes sure they arrive at it better prepared.

"A purchase ends at the counter. This one stays with you," said Eng. Fernando Rojas, Head of Health Ventures and Managing Partner GCC at The Agile Monkeys. "The smartest thing anyone can do is walk into that consultation already understanding what they are asking about. Explaining something this complex, in Arabic, at whatever hour someone is thinking about it, was not possible until very recently. It is now."

How does it work?

Zaina operates as a conversational assistant, meaning users interact with it the way they would a knowledgeable contact rather than a search engine. It is built to explain:

• How different procedural approaches compare across providers
• What recovery genuinely involves, not the sanitised version
• Which questions are worth raising in a clinical consultation
• The range of outcomes associated with specific procedures

The platform handles Arabic-language input and is built to recognise dialectal variation across the GCC, which matters in a region where a formal Modern Standard Arabic interface can feel cold or inaccessible to everyday users. Rojas was direct about where the real difficulty lies: "The model is the easy part. Making it work inside a regulated field, safely, every day, is the serious part."

Why does it matter?

Better-informed patients are not just good for patients. Clinics that compete on clinical quality rather than marketing budgets benefit when someone arrives at a consultation already understanding the procedure, the alternatives, and the realistic outcomes. That shifts the conversation from persuasion to evaluation, which is where it should start.

So there is a commercial logic here alongside the patient safety argument. Providers who rely on substance over advertising spend are naturally advantaged when the person across the desk already knows what questions to ask. Zaina does not refer patients to clinics, which keeps its position neutral and its advice credible.

The context

The Agile Monkeys is a Spanish AI engineering firm that builds products for regulated industries, including health, retail, and financial services, across Europe, the United States, and the Gulf. Its expansion into aesthetic medicine reflects a broader pattern across the GCC, where Vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia and parallel digital health strategies in the UAE are creating real appetite for AI-backed patient engagement tools.

Aesthetic medicine is a sector that has largely been left out of that conversation, treated as adjacent to healthcare rather than part of it. But the procedures involved carry genuine clinical risk and the decisions are permanent. Closing the information gap in Arabic, in a region where the market for aesthetic procedures is growing fast, addresses something that has been overlooked for a long time.

The company has confirmed plans to expand into Dubai in the fourth quarter of 2026.