The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH), in partnership with Microsoft UAE, has announced the launch of the world’s first AI-powered Population Health Intelligence (PHI) platform at GITEX Global 2025. This pioneering initiative creates a digital twin of Abu Dhabi’s entire healthcare ecosystem, designed to shift the emirate from reactive treatment to proactive, data-driven prevention. The platform integrates vast datasets to forecast health risks, simulate public health interventions, and guide evidence-based policies to improve long-term community well-being.
A Digital Twin for a Healthier Abu Dhabi
The PHI platform functions as a real-time digital replica of the emirate’s health landscape. It is the first system of its kind to operate at a city-wide scale, integrating a diverse range of data including clinical records, environmental factors, and lifestyle inputs. By creating this comprehensive model, health officials can gain unprecedented insights into the complex variables affecting population health, allowing for more targeted and effective strategies. The platform is built on Microsoft’s secure cloud infrastructure, ensuring full compliance with Abu Dhabi’s stringent data privacy and governance frameworks.
From Reactive Care to Predictive Intervention
Designed around two core pillars—Predict (Insights) and Prevent & Act (Interventions)—the platform leverages AI agents, advanced analytics, and geospatial simulations to move beyond traditional healthcare models. The system can predict emerging health trends, identify at-risk populations, and model the potential impact of policy changes or clinical interventions before they are implemented. According to the DoH, the initial focus areas for the platform will be obesity and cancer, using AI-driven analytics to improve the effectiveness of preventive programmes and enable early detection.
Building on a Robust Digital Foundation
This launch represents a major milestone in Abu Dhabi’s digital health journey, built upon five years of intensive investment and development. The foundation was laid with the launch of Malaffi in 2020, the region’s first Health Information Exchange platform, which now connects the emirate’s healthcare ecosystem with 3.5 billion clinical records. This was followed by the 2024 launch of Sahatna, an all-in-one healthcare mobile app. The new PHI platform integrates data from these systems and more, marking Abu Dhabi’s transition toward its long-term goal of becoming the world’s first fully operational “learning health system,” where AI-led data feedback loops continuously improve healthcare outcomes.
About The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi
The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH) is the regulative body of the healthcare sector in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Its mandate is to ensure excellence in healthcare for the community by monitoring the health status of the population. The DoH defines the strategy for the health system, monitors and analyses the health status of the population and the performance of the system, and shapes the regulatory framework for the health system, in all cases to the highest international standards.
Source: Middle East AI News
