The Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) has granted marketing authorization to two AI-enabled medical software products: “Dental IQ,” designed to support dental diagnosis, and “SAARIA,” built for retinal screening in diabetic patients. Both were developed by Saudi startups and both went through the SFDA’s Innovative Medical Devices Pathway, which offers early regulatory guidance to companies bringing novel technologies to market. Local clinical studies were conducted in the Kingdom to validate performance under real-world conditions, and both companies have committed to post-marketing follow-up to monitor how the tools perform in practice.

How does it work?

Dental IQ uses deep learning algorithms to analyze dental X-ray images. It flags potential findings such as dental caries, periodontal disease, and structural changes in teeth and surrounding tissues. The aim is to give practitioners a more consistent second read, supporting diagnostic accuracy and treatment planning.

SAARIA analyzes retinal fundus images using AI to screen diabetic patients for signs of diabetic retinopathy. Early detection is the core objective. The software is designed to identify patients who may need specialist evaluation, helping to speed up referral before the condition progresses. Diabetic retinopathy remains one of the leading causes of preventable blindness globally, and in the GCC, where diabetes prevalence is among the highest in the world, the clinical need is acute.

Both products are positioned as clinical support tools, not autonomous decision-makers. The SFDA has been clear on this point: AI outputs are intended to inform clinical judgment, not replace it. Healthcare professionals retain full responsibility for reviewing findings and making decisions based on each patient’s condition.

Why does it matter?

The GCC has no shortage of imported health technology. What it has historically lacked is domestically built, domestically validated medical software. These two approvals change that, at least in part. They show that local companies can produce AI tools that meet regulatory standards, conduct rigorous clinical studies, and bring a product to market through formal channels.

There are also practical benefits specific to the region. AI models trained and validated on local patient populations, with the demographic and epidemiological characteristics of Saudi Arabia, are more likely to perform reliably in Saudi clinical settings than tools developed elsewhere. That matters especially for diabetic retinopathy screening, where early, accurate detection can prevent blindness in a high-risk population.

The context

These approvals sit within a broader policy push. Saudi Arabia’s Health Sector Transformation Program, one of the pillars of Vision 2030, has set explicit targets around digital health adoption, local industry development, and improved patient outcomes. Regulatory bodies like the SFDA have a direct role in that agenda, and the Innovative Medical Devices Pathway was built precisely to support companies that might otherwise struggle with the time and complexity of standard regulatory processes.

Across the GCC, regulators are working to build frameworks that can keep pace with AI in healthcare without sacrificing safety. The UAE has its own digital health strategy and the Dubai Health Authority has been active in piloting AI clinical tools. But approvals of locally developed AI medical software, validated through domestic clinical studies, are still relatively rare in the region. Saudi Arabia has now set a reference point. Other GCC markets will be watching.

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The case is striking not just for its outcome, but for what it reveals about the growing clinical challenge of peripheral arterial disease in the UAE, particularly among patients with diabetes.

How does it work?

SPUR is a minimally invasive device used to treat severely narrowed or blocked arteries below the knee, the small vessels that carry blood to the foot and lower leg. In many patients, especially those with diabetes, these arteries develop significant calcification and disease, making them difficult to treat with standard techniques.

The standard approach is balloon angioplasty, where a small balloon is inflated inside the artery to reopen it. But in some vessels, the artery recoils once the balloon is removed, reducing the effectiveness of the procedure. SPUR addresses this by temporarily supporting the artery wall during treatment, holding the vessel open while the intervention takes place.

The critical difference is what happens at the end. The scaffold is fully retrieved before the procedure is complete, leaving no permanent metal stent or implant inside the body. This matters because:

• Small below-the-knee arteries are poor candidates for permanent metal implants, which can cause complications in heavily diseased vessels
• A clean vessel with no implant is easier to treat again if the patient needs a future intervention
• It preserves all options for follow-up care, which is important in a patient population that often requires ongoing vascular management

Dr Saher Arour, Consultant Vascular Surgeon at Medcare Hospital Al Safa and the first surgeon in Dubai to perform the procedure, described the clinical logic plainly: “When a foot wound does not heal because of poor circulation, restoring blood flow can make the difference between progressive tissue loss and giving the foot a chance to heal. SPUR provides temporary support to the artery during treatment and is then completely removed. We therefore gain the benefit of temporary scaffolding without leaving a permanent implant behind.”

In the first patient’s case, the narrowed artery was successfully reopened, the scaffold was retrieved, and follow-up imaging confirmed improved blood flow to the foot. The wound improved and the limb was preserved.

Why does it matter?

The UAE has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. The International Diabetes Federation puts the age-standardised prevalence at around 20.7% among adults aged 20 to 79. Diabetes is a primary driver of peripheral arterial disease and diabetic foot complications, and when left untreated, these conditions can lead to amputation.

Limb loss carries serious consequences: reduced quality of life, long-term rehabilitation costs, and in many cases, significantly shortened life expectancy. So a therapy that can improve outcomes for patients who might otherwise face amputation has real consequences for public health, not just for individual patients.

Bilal Al Soweissi, COO of Medcare Hospital Al Safa, said the introduction of SPUR gives patients with complex below-the-knee arterial disease access to another advanced treatment option in Dubai, adding that timely restoration of blood flow can play a major role in wound healing and limb preservation for patients with diabetic foot wounds.

The context

The UAE has invested heavily in building a healthcare system capable of treating complex, chronic conditions locally rather than sending patients abroad. Medcare Hospital Al Safa’s adoption of SPUR therapy fits within that direction. It also aligns with the broader priorities of UAE Vision 2030 and related health strategy frameworks, which place diabetes prevention and management near the top of the national agenda.

Being first in Dubai to offer a procedure is not just a marketing milestone. It signals that the clinical and regulatory infrastructure exists to evaluate, approve, and deploy specialised technologies quickly. For patients with advanced vascular disease, that speed can determine whether a limb is saved or lost. And in a country where diabetes affects roughly one in five adults, the number of people who may eventually need this kind of intervention is not small.

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Announced September 9, the new lineup introduces what Apple calls the Health Sensing System, a combination of redesigned optical and electrical heart sensors that measure heart rate every five seconds, all day. In a study of over 1,000 participants, Apple says its heart rate accuracy outperformed all leading wearables tested. That’s a significant claim, and one the company is backing with peer-reviewed methodology.

The updated Health app, arriving later this year for iPhone and iPad, uses Apple Intelligence to translate that raw biometric data into plain-language guidance. Think less data dump, more conversation with a knowledgeable friend.

How does it work?

The Health Sensing System measures heart rate variability (HRV) up to every five minutes, 24 times more frequently than before. Two HRV variants are now tracked separately: Recovery HRV for daily stress and recovery signals, and Overall HRV for longer-term cardiovascular health trends.

A new Readiness score, ranging from 0 to 10, pulls together a user’s recent activity, sleep, and vitals into a single daily recommendation: Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready, or Go For It. The score updates throughout the day as new data arrives. The algorithm was developed in collaboration with physicians and exercise scientists using data from the Apple Heart and Movement Study.

The redesigned Health app adds two new tabs:

• Insights: A dynamic daily summary across heart health, sleep, readiness, fitness, and cycle tracking, with personalized recommendations based on the user’s own data patterns
• Longevity: A longitudinal view covering heart health, sleep, mental wellbeing, movement, metabolic health, and hearing over time

Why does it matter?

For healthcare professionals and policymakers across the GCC, this is worth watching closely. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 has placed preventive health at the center of its National Transformation Program, and the UAE’s National Agenda targets significant reductions in chronic disease burden. Consumer wearables that generate clinically meaningful data, and present it clearly to users, could become a real asset in population health strategies.

The privacy architecture matters too. Apple continues to process sensitive health data on-device, which aligns with the strict data sovereignty requirements that GCC regulators are increasingly enforcing.

The context

Apple is not alone in this space. Competitors including Samsung, Garmin, and a growing field of health-focused startups are all chasing the same goal: turning passive wearable data into actionable health intelligence. But Apple’s combination of hardware accuracy, AI processing, and a closed ecosystem gives it a structural advantage in delivering consistent, reliable outputs.

So as GCC health systems look to digital tools to reduce the pressure on hospital infrastructure, and as employers across the region explore corporate wellness programs, platforms like this will likely feature more prominently in procurement and policy conversations. Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 are available now.

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King’s Jeddah opened in 2025 as an extension of King’s College Hospital London, a teaching institution founded in 1840. It operates under the same UK clinical protocols as its London counterpart and has over 130 specialist consultants across 35 clinical specialties and 10 centres of excellence. That’s a significant clinical footprint, and it demands a digital infrastructure to match.

The hospital has been running InterSystems TrakCare as its core EHR since opening. The move to IntelliCare is not a switch from a failing system. It’s a progression from one that worked. That distinction matters. The clinical and operational teams already understand the InterSystems environment, which means the transition carries less disruption risk and more institutional confidence behind it.

Dr. Ibrahim Alharfi, Chief Executive Officer of King’s College Hospital London – Jeddah, put it plainly: “Technology is not the destination; better patient outcomes are. Adopting InterSystems IntelliCare enables our teams to work with greater intelligence, reduce avoidable delays, and keep the clinician’s attention where it belongs: on the patient in front of them.”

How will it work?

IntelliCare is built on the TrakCare foundation but designed to embed AI directly into clinical workflows rather than sitting alongside them. For King’s Jeddah, the platform will introduce several key capabilities:

• Ambient clinical documentation: AI listens to clinical conversations and converts them into structured records automatically, cutting the time clinicians spend typing.
• Built-in AI workflow intelligence: Intelligence is present at every step, from ordering and prescribing to reviewing results, without requiring separate integrations.
• Clinician-centred design: The system is built to minimise the friction technology creates during patient encounters.
• Enhanced interoperability: Full support for HL7 FHIR and SMART on FHIR standards, connecting the hospital within Saudi Arabia’s broader health data ecosystem.

Diaa Kamal, Chief Information Officer at King’s Jeddah, described the platform as one where “AI surfaces the right information at the right moment, documentation happens naturally, and workflows adapt to the clinician rather than the other way around.”

Why does it matter?

The EMEA-first status is notable, but the more significant point is what this reflects about Saudi Arabia’s trajectory in healthcare technology. The Kingdom’s Vision 2030 health agenda has consistently pushed institutions to raise care quality while reducing inefficiencies. AI-embedded clinical systems are a direct answer to both goals.

Ambient documentation alone addresses one of the most persistent complaints from clinicians globally: that they spend more time with screens than with patients. If IntelliCare delivers on that promise at King’s Jeddah, it will carry weight far beyond one hospital’s deployment.

Ali Abi Raad, Managing Director of InterSystems Middle East, India and South Africa, said King’s Jeddah is “perfectly positioned to realise the full potential of IntelliCare,” pointing to the hospital’s existing foundation on TrakCare as the basis for that confidence.

The context

Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in health digitisation over the past several years, with the Ministry of Health pushing EHR adoption across public and private sectors alike. But the conversation is shifting. Basic digitisation is largely done. The question now is what healthcare institutions do with the data they are collecting and how intelligently their systems can act on it.

King’s Jeddah’s decision to adopt an AI-native EHR places it at the front of that conversation in the region. And because it sits within a globally recognised clinical brand, with strong academic oversight and measurable outcome standards, what happens there will be watched closely by peers across the GCC. This is the kind of deployment that tends to set direction for others.

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How will it work?

The lab operates as a shared infrastructure between ADU’s academic teams and FertiClinic’s clinical specialists. Rather than running in parallel, the two organisations are working within the same physical space, which means research questions can come directly from clinical observation and findings can move back into practice without the usual delays. The setup is intended to support postgraduate students, faculty researchers, and clinicians working on reproductive science, embryology, and related fields.

Key features of the facility include:

• State-of-the-art reproductive biology and embryology equipment
• Integrated access for ADU students and researchers alongside FertiClinic clinical staff
• A structure that supports both basic research and applied clinical studies
• Pathways for students to gain exposure to real fertility treatment environments

Why does it matter?

Reproductive health is one of the less-discussed corners of the GCC health sector, but demand for fertility services across the region has been rising steadily for years. The UAE has seen significant growth in licensed fertility centres, and there is increasing recognition that local research capacity, not just imported clinical expertise, needs to keep pace.

That’s where this kind of partnership becomes relevant. Training the next generation of reproductive medicine specialists inside a research environment tied to real clinical work is a different proposition from sending graduates abroad or relying on overseas-developed protocols. It builds institutional knowledge locally, and that matters for a country that has made healthcare self-sufficiency a stated priority under national development frameworks.

For ADU specifically, the lab strengthens its position as a research-active university with genuine ties to industry and clinical practice, not just theoretical output.

The context

The UAE’s health strategy has placed growing emphasis on research and development as a pillar of long-term sustainability, not just service delivery. Initiatives linked to the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision and the broader national agenda have repeatedly pointed to the need for universities to move closer to industry, producing graduates who can contribute to the health system rather than simply enter it.

Reproductive medicine sits at an interesting intersection: it is high-demand, technically complex, ethically nuanced, and still relatively under-researched at the regional level. A facility that brings university rigour together with clinical access could produce work that is genuinely useful, both for improving patient outcomes locally and for contributing to the wider body of research in this field.

So far, neither ADU nor FertiClinic has published a specific research agenda for the lab. But the structure is in place. Whether it produces meaningful output will depend on what questions the teams decide to ask.

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How will it work?

Deep phenotyping goes well beyond a standard health survey. Rather than collecting basic clinical data, the study will build detailed, multi-layered biological profiles of participants over time. That means tracking genetic markers, molecular indicators, imaging data, lifestyle habits, and environmental exposures, all in combination. The goal is to identify patterns that predict disease before symptoms appear, and to understand why certain conditions present differently in Arab and South Asian populations than they do in European ones.

MBZUAI is positioning artificial intelligence at the center of this effort. The volume and complexity of data generated by deep phenotyping studies is too large for conventional analysis. AI models, trained on population-specific data, can identify correlations and risk signals that would otherwise remain buried. The study is designed from the ground up with that kind of computational analysis in mind.

Participants will be followed over an extended period, which is what makes this longitudinal rather than a one-time snapshot. That design matters because chronic diseases, metabolic conditions, and genetic predispositions often take years to manifest. Tracking the same individuals across time gives researchers the ability to study how risk accumulates, not just how it presents.

Why does it matter?

The UAE has some of the highest rates of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease in the world. And yet the majority of clinical guidelines, drug development pipelines, and risk prediction models used in the country were developed using data from populations that look nothing like the UAE’s. That mismatch has real consequences for patients. A risk threshold calibrated on a Northern European cohort may miss or misclassify risk in an Emirati or South Asian patient entirely.

Building a locally grounded evidence base is not just a scientific priority. It’s a policy one. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and the UAE’s own health strategy both emphasize reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases and building research capacity inside the region. Studies like this one are how that capacity gets built.

The context

MBZUAI has been expanding its health and biological research portfolio steadily since its founding. This study reflects a broader shift across the GCC toward population-level data infrastructure, with initiatives in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain also investing in genomic and health data programs. The difference with deep phenotyping is depth. Where genomic studies focus on DNA, deep phenotyping captures the full biological picture, including how genes interact with environment, diet, stress, and behavior.

For health systems planning across the Gulf, that kind of data is what turns population health from a reactive discipline into a predictive one. This study is a step in that direction.

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What’s the news?

Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City (SSMC), a subsidiary of PureHealth and one of the UAE’s principal hospitals for complex and serious care, has reported significant expansion in its robotic surgery programme. The hospital has now performed over 1,260 robotic-assisted procedures since 2020, with volumes rising 42 per cent in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025. In Q1, procedures climbed from 87 to 131. In Q2, from 119 to 161. The programme now spans six surgical specialties:

• Thoracic surgery
• Urology
• Oncology
• Orthopaedics
• Neurosurgery
• General surgery

The hospital operates four robotic systems for general surgery, two platforms dedicated to orthopaedic procedures, and one neurosurgical platform acquired in 2026. All bariatric and thoracic surgeons are trained in robotic techniques, as are 80 per cent of general surgeons. Recent cases include single-port robotic thoracic sympathectomy for hyperhidrosis and emergency robotic urology surgery.

Why does it matter?

Robotic-assisted surgery reduces physical trauma during procedures, shortens hospital stays, and tends to support faster recovery, particularly in high-complexity cases. But the clinical benefits are only part of the picture. What SSMC is building is institutional depth: a programme with enough volume, specialist coverage, and training infrastructure to function as a regional reference point, not just a local service.

That training dimension matters. Through the SSMC Training Academy, the hospital is running education and knowledge-sharing programmes for healthcare professionals across the UAE and the wider region. So the impact of what’s being built here doesn’t stop at the hospital’s doors.

Dr Marwan Al Kaabi, Chief Executive Officer of SSMC, put it directly: “Robotic-assisted surgery has become an integral part of how we approach some of the most complex procedures, enabling greater precision while supporting minimally invasive treatment pathways for our patients.”

The context

This is happening against a clear policy backdrop. Abu Dhabi has invested heavily in building advanced clinical capacity within the emirate, reducing the need for patients to travel abroad for specialist care. SSMC is central to that effort. As a PureHealth asset, it also sits within the largest healthcare group in the Middle East, which gives it access to capital, technology partnerships, and scale that most regional hospitals don’t have.

Across the GCC, robotic surgery adoption has been uneven. Some centres have platforms but lack the procedure volumes or trained surgeons to use them effectively. SSMC’s 42 per cent volume growth in six months suggests it is past that early adoption phase. And with a dedicated training academy now in place, it’s positioning itself to lift standards across the region, not just within its own walls. That’s a meaningful shift for complex surgical care in the Arab world.

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On September 8, Salesforce announced three products designed to shift pharma and medtech organizations from reactive workflows to proactive, AI-driven operations: Regulated Content Management, Command Center for Life Sciences, and Life Sciences MCP. Each addresses a different pressure point, but together they are built around a single idea: compliance, intelligence, and action should happen earlier, not after the damage is done.

How does it work?

Regulated Content Management (RCM) is probably the most structurally significant of the three. Traditional medical, legal, and regulatory review catches problems late, often after teams have already invested significant time building content. RCM moves compliance upstream. It connects claims, supporting evidence, references, and market-specific obligations such as Fair Balance or Important Safety Information into what Salesforce describes as living, interconnected data. AI agents can then flag expiring substantiation, identify potential compliance gaps, and determine which assets need updating before formal review begins.

The system is built on Salesforce’s agentic platform and covers three workflow areas:

• Claims Management: Agents identify claim statements within content, match them to approved claim records, and surface the supporting evidence, keeping claims connected to approved use and market context throughout their lifecycle.
• Content Authoring: Teams can generate and refine content grounded in brand strategy, campaign context, and channel objectives, with compliance obligations built in from the start rather than applied during review.
• Obligations Assistance: Agents identify applicable market, audience, and channel-specific obligations, surface potential gaps, and flag downstream impacts when regulations or internal policies change.

RCM does not require organizations to consolidate content into a single repository. It can work alongside existing digital asset management systems, content management platforms, and authoring tools. Every action, annotation, review, and approval is tracked through an audit trail that meets ALCOA+ standards, and the system supports 21 CFR Part 11-compliant electronic signatures.

Command Center for Life Sciences works differently. It is designed to be the operational nerve center of a life sciences organization, pulling together omnichannel engagement data, market sentiment, and revenue trends into a single view. Built-in anomaly detection can identify deviations such as safety signal spikes, device adoption lags, or drops in patient adherence, and link them to root causes. From there, it recommends or executes mitigating actions, with human approval where required. Scenario modelling, powered by Tableau Next, lets leaders run what-if analyses: what happens if medical science liaison hours increase, or if field rep coverage is reallocated in a specific territory?

Life Sciences MCP extends the intelligence of both products beyond the Salesforce interface. Whether teams are working in Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, or external partner portals, the platform’s governed workflows follow them. Built-in controls automatically apply PII masking, zero data retention, and HIPAA, GxP, and 21 CFR Part 11 compliance across every surface, without teams needing to rebuild that logic for each environment.

Why does it matter?

The compliance burden in life sciences is unlike almost any other industry. A marketing asset for a prescription drug carries regulatory obligations that vary by market, channel, and audience. Getting that wrong does not just create rework. It can delay approvals, trigger regulatory action, or undermine patient safety. The traditional answer has been sequential review: build the content, then send it through legal, medical, and regulatory gates. That process is slow by design.

What Salesforce is proposing here is a structural change. If compliance intelligence is embedded at the point of creation, rather than applied at the end, teams enter formal review with fewer problems to fix. That compresses timelines. And in an industry where drug launch windows are narrow and competitive, weeks matter.

For the GCC specifically, where Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 health agenda and the UAE’s ongoing push to become a regional life sciences hub are both driving investment in pharmaceutical and medtech infrastructure, tools that reduce time-to-market and improve compliance audit trails have clear relevance. Regulators in the region are also becoming more sophisticated, and organizations operating across multiple GCC markets face the same multi-jurisdiction compliance complexity that these tools are designed to address.

The context

Salesforce has been building out its life sciences vertical for several years, and this announcement is part of a broader push to make Agentforce, its agentic AI platform, genuinely useful in regulated industries rather than just in sales and service functions. The challenge has always been trust: healthcare and pharma organizations cannot deploy AI that operates outside of controlled, auditable environments. The emphasis on ALCOA+, 21 CFR Part 11, and HIPAA compliance in all three products is a direct response to that concern.

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) component is also worth watching. By extending governed intelligence to external agent environments including third-party AI tools like Claude and Gemini, Salesforce is positioning itself as a compliance infrastructure layer rather than just a CRM vendor. That is a significant shift in how the company presents itself to regulated industries. The products were demonstrated live at Dreamforce 2026.

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HealthEx is a platform that lets individuals access their own medical records and share them, on their terms, with health apps, AI tools, providers, and insurance plans. The new Muse connector means that for the first time, a person’s AI agent can draw on their actual clinical history, visit notes, referrals, prescriptions, and test results, rather than relying on whatever a user happens to type in.

Priyanka Agarwal, a former UCSF internist and co-founder and CEO of HealthEx, put it plainly: “So much of what falls through the cracks in medicine is routine, like a follow-up a doctor asked for that was never scheduled. Individuals have always carried that burden.” With Muse connected to HealthEx, those loose ends become visible and actionable for the individual.

How does it work?

A person verifies their identity through HealthEx, which then automatically locates their medical records across clinics, hospitals, labs, and specialists. Nothing is retrieved or passed to Muse without explicit consent. Through HealthEx Wallet, the platform’s web app, users can see all their records in one place, manage every active connection, and spot gaps in their history. Connecting to Muse requires a single approval. No portal logins, no technical setup.

Once connected, a person’s Muse can:

• Draw on shared health history to give personalised responses rather than generic health information
• Surface unfinished tasks already in the records, such as an unscheduled referral or a prescription running low
• Draft visit summaries and prepare questions worth raising with a doctor
• Check in before taking any action on a person’s behalf, such as setting a reminder or drafting a message
• Be disconnected at any time, with every permission tracked and auditable

HealthEx operates as an Individual Access Services provider under the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, known as TEFCA, which sets the legal and technical standards for secure health data exchange in the United States.

Why does it matter?

The fragmentation of medical records is a genuine problem, and not a small one. Most Americans have health histories spread across dozens of care sites accumulated over a lifetime. That fragmentation means patients arrive at new appointments without context, and it means AI tools built to help with health decisions are working from almost nothing. A personal AI that doesn’t know your diagnoses, your current medications, or what your doctor said at your last visit is limited in what it can actually do for you. This integration is a direct response to that limitation.

But the consent architecture matters just as much as the technical connection. HealthEx has built a model where the individual, not the platform, not the AI company, decides what is shared and when it stops. That design choice has implications beyond the US market.

The context

Across the Gulf, health authorities are working through similar questions. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 health transformation and the UAE’s national health data strategy both identify patient-centred data access as a priority. The challenge of fragmented records is not uniquely American. Patients in the GCC also accumulate history across private clinics, government hospitals, and specialist centres, often with no unified view of their own health. Platforms like Malaffi in Abu Dhabi and Nabidh in Dubai are building the infrastructure for unified health records, but the question of how individuals access and direct their own data, especially as AI agents become more capable, is still being worked out regionally. The HealthEx and Muse model offers one reference point for how that can be done with consent at the centre.

Muse is currently available in the United States on iOS and Android and at muse.ai. HealthEx Wallet is available at healthex.io.

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The partnership uses Nokia’s Network as Code platform, which gives software developers direct access to telecom network capabilities through application programming interfaces, or APIs. For BeeHealthy, the result is a login experience that does not depend on a text message arriving, being intercepted, or being entered correctly. Authentication happens at the network layer, silently and with far greater security than a six-digit code sent to a phone.

This is not a minor technical update. Healthcare platforms are high-value targets for cyberattacks, and the Middle East has seen a sharp rise in health sector breaches over recent years. Any tool that reduces credential theft risk without adding friction for clinicians deserves attention from the region’s health IT community.

How does it work?

Nokia’s Network as Code is a developer-facing platform that exposes telecom capabilities, things like device location, SIM-based identity, and quality of service controls, as APIs that third-party software companies can integrate into their products. BeeHealthy has used one of these APIs, specifically SIM-based authentication, to verify user identity without sending a code via SMS. The telecom network itself confirms that the device attempting to log in is the registered device associated with that user’s account. No code is typed. No message is intercepted. The verification is near-instant and invisible to the end user.

Why does it matter?

For healthcare providers, the security upside is clear. SIM-based authentication is significantly harder to spoof than SMS, which is vulnerable to SIM-swap attacks and basic phishing. But the business implications run wider than that. Nokia is positioning this as a monetizable enterprise use case for mobile operators, meaning telecom companies in the GCC and beyond can generate new revenue by opening their network APIs to health tech and other enterprise software developers. That’s a meaningful shift in how operators think about their infrastructure, less as a pipe for data, more as a platform with billable capabilities. For GCC operators already under pressure to grow beyond connectivity revenues, that framing is worth taking seriously.

The context

This partnership fits into a broader industry push around network APIs, led in part by the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative, which Nokia’s platform is aligned with. Across the GCC, digital health is a national priority. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 has placed health technology at the center of its economic diversification agenda, and the UAE has made interoperable, secure health data infrastructure a cornerstone of its health strategy. The adoption of telecom-native security tools by health platforms operating in the Middle East, like BeeHealthy, signals that the region is beginning to benefit from this infrastructure shift in concrete, clinical ways. So the question for regional operators and health IT leaders is not whether network APIs will reshape enterprise software security. It is whether they will be early participants in building that ecosystem or late adopters of it.

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