Doctify turns six in the UAE and its hospital rankings arrive just as AI starts deciding where patients go

More than half of UAE residents now use AI to manage their health. That single figure, drawn from the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, tells you almost everything you need to know about why Doctify's latest move matters. When patients stop typing into Google and start asking ChatGPT to recommend a cardiologist, the rules for how hospitals get found change completely. And providers that haven't thought carefully about their verified digital presence are increasingly the ones getting left out.

What's the news?

Doctify, the healthcare reviews and booking platform used by more than ten million people each year, has published its first annual ranking of hospitals across the UAE to mark six years of operations in the region. The rankings cover hospitals across four areas: Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Al Ain. Each hospital's placement is calculated using patient experience reviews, ratings, award wins, and official accreditations.

The platform also expanded into Saudi Arabia in June this year, and was awarded 'Best Digital Health Solution of the Year' at the MedTech World Awards for the Middle East, held in Dubai in 2026.

On the AI front, Doctify reports a 680% year-on-year increase in click-throughs from AI search tools, including ChatGPT and Google AI, over the past twelve months. Provider profiles on the platform now appear in Google AI overviews more than one million times a month. The company attributes this directly to its verification model: every review is tied to a confirmed appointment and moderated by a clinical governance committee, giving AI systems the structured, trustworthy data they need to surface reliable results.

Key features of the Doctify platform include:

• Verified patient reviews linked to real appointments and overseen by a clinical governance committee
• Structured provider profiles optimised for AI search tools including ChatGPT and Google AI
• Hospital rankings calculated across patient experience scores, accreditations, and award recognition
• Comparable feedback data across departments, helping hospital decision-makers identify operational trends
• A free entry tier for healthcare providers, with a paid monthly subscription available for premium features

Jason Nahani, Chief Revenue Officer at Doctify, said: "Six years ago we entered the UAE because we could see that patients in the region were ready for a more transparent way to find and compare healthcare providers. They are no longer just searching Google, they are also asking AI tools to recommend a specialist or a hospital, and those tools need verified, structured data to return trustworthy results."

Why does it matter?

The shift from search to AI recommendation is not a future trend, it is already happening in the UAE. When 59% of residents are using AI to manage their health, the ability of a hospital or clinic to be surfaced by those tools becomes a clinical and commercial priority, not just a marketing one. A facility with an outstanding reputation but a thin or unverified online profile risks being invisible to AI-generated results, regardless of the quality of its care.

So the Doctify model sits at a genuinely useful intersection. Verified data is what general review platforms struggle to provide at scale. And it is precisely what AI search systems are built to prioritise. For hospital administrators and clinic managers, there is also an operational angle: structured, comparable feedback across specialties makes it easier to spot where patient experience is falling short and where it is working.

For the Gulf more broadly, this signals a growing gap between providers who are actively managing their digital presence and those who are not. That gap is likely to widen as AI search becomes more embedded in how people make health decisions.

The context

Doctify was founded in 2015 by NHS orthopaedic surgeons Stephanie Eltz and Suman Saha. The platform now operates across seven markets: the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Australia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. It lists over 220,000 healthcare providers globally, with more than 35,000 actively partnered specialists. The company was recognised in the Financial Times FT1000 as one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe in 2024.

The Saudi expansion is well-timed. The Kingdom has a $57 billion health budget, 98% smartphone penetration, and a young, fast-growing population that is already comfortable with digital services. Both the UAE's Vision 2030-aligned health digitalisation push and Saudi Arabia's own Vision 2030 framework place patient empowerment and digital health infrastructure at the centre of reform agendas. A platform built around verified patient voice fits naturally into that direction of travel.

Doctify has said it plans to bring additional Gulf markets into its network over the coming months. For healthcare providers across the region considering their digital strategy, the message from this platform's growth trajectory is fairly direct: AI is already part of how your next patient will find you. The question is whether your profile is built to be found.