M42 launches 10,000-patient wearable pilot in Abu Dhabi to reshape chronic disease care

Most patients with chronic kidney disease spend the vast majority of their lives outside a clinic. Between haemodialysis sessions, their condition can shift significantly, and no one is watching. M42's new pilot in Abu Dhabi is built around that problem.

The Abu Dhabi-based health group has launched a programme enrolling 10,000 patients, split evenly between 5,000 renal cases and 5,000 diabetes cases, to test whether continuous data from wearable devices can meaningfully improve how doctors manage both conditions. M42 Group CEO Dimitris Moulavasilis confirmed the details to Khaleej Times, describing the initiative as a move toward making continuous monitoring part of routine clinical care rather than a research novelty.

The pilot is live now. And its scale, 10,000 patients from the outset, signals that M42 is not treating this as a small proof-of-concept exercise.

How does it work?

Patients in the programme wear devices that collect health data continuously. That data is then combined with each patient's existing clinical records, allowing the system to track changes between appointments rather than relying solely on what is captured during a scheduled visit. The goal is to give clinicians a more complete picture of how a patient's condition is evolving day to day.

For haemodialysis patients specifically, this matters because significant physiological changes can occur between treatment sessions, with no clinical team present to observe them. Moulavasilis said the wearable data would help identify those changes and allow care to be tailored accordingly.

The pilot also builds on work M42 has already done in predictive AI. The company has developed a system that can predict vascular-access thrombosis in dialysis patients roughly a week before the complication occurs. But prediction alone is not enough. As Moulavasilis put it: "Okay, you predict, so what? You need to have the clinical care pathways to treat the people." The wearable pilot is part of connecting those two things, continuous data feeding into predictive systems, with clinical action at the other end.

Why does it matter?

Diabetes and chronic kidney disease are among the most prevalent conditions across the GCC. The UAE and Saudi Arabia both carry significant disease burdens tied to lifestyle factors, and both governments have invested heavily in shifting health systems toward prevention and early intervention. A model that catches deterioration before it becomes a crisis fits directly into that agenda.

But the pilot is also about something broader than wearables. It reflects a shift in how Abu Dhabi is thinking about health data infrastructure. The emirate's Malaffi health information exchange, the Abu Dhabi Biobank (which opened in April with capacity for up to five million biological samples), and investments in genomics and environmental science are being built to work together. Moulavasilis described an ecosystem where biological samples, genomic data, lifestyle information, and real-world patient-generated data can be linked and used in combination.

That kind of infrastructure is relevant not just to patient care but to life-sciences investment. The ability to link wearable data with biobank samples and genomic profiles could make Abu Dhabi attractive to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies looking for research environments with rich, connected datasets.

The context

Abu Dhabi has been methodical in building the components of a precision health system over the past several years. The Biobank, the Malaffi system, liquid biopsy programmes for cancer detection, gene-editing collaborations with Mammoth Biosciences, and pharmacogenomics applications have each added a layer to that infrastructure. The M42 wearable pilot is another layer.

Dr Asma Al Mannaei, Executive Director of Life Sciences at the Department of Health, Abu Dhabi, has stressed the importance of moving innovation out of the research stage and into actual healthcare delivery. That pressure to translate rather than just develop is visible in the structure of this pilot: real patients, real devices, real clinical integration from day one.

For health systems across the GCC watching Abu Dhabi's approach, the key question is whether continuous monitoring at scale can change outcomes, not just collect data. The answer, when it comes from 10,000 patients, will carry weight.