Dubai to host Middle East’s first Precision Medicine Exhibition & Summit

Dubai will next month host the Middle East’s first dedicated exhibition and Summit devoted to the digital technology driven precision medicine (PM) field. Over 70 international experts, thought leaders and medical pioneers from Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the USA, are due to deliver incisive insights into the new methodology which is moving healthcare from a ‘one size fits all’ to a targeted, personalised, approach.

The newly launched Precision Medicine Exhibition & Summit, held under the patronage of Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence and President of UAE Genetic Diseases Association, will run at the Conrad Hotel from 24th – 25th May, where healthcare professionals gather to learn the latest PM techniques and innovations, aspiring health tech startups will be pitching for funding to a panel of investors at the co-located Emerge GHI breakthrough event.

The new event launches come as global data and insights firm Netscribes projects the Middle East and Africa precision medicine market to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 9.96 percent to a revenue worth of US$2.51 billion by 2023.

“The integration of precision medicine into general healthcare settings gives patients with genetic disorders a lot of optimism. Personalised medicine is certainly transforming the healthcare ecosystem for the better, driven by digitalisation and a rapidly rising corpus of knowledge that is redefining how we perceive the very nature of the origins and development of fatal diseases. Precision medicine will help us better understand the role of genetics, provide  tailor-made health management solution for each individual and reduce the burden of not only genetic disorders but other rare diseases in long-run,” said Dr. Maryam Matar, Founder and Chairperson, UAE Genetic Diseases Association.

David Stradling, Event Director, said, “GCC healthcare providers have already moved into the PM field, which is expected to grow by 11 percent annually to 2026 to be worth US$142 billion globally, with Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU) and the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Saudi Arabia having established biomedical and genomics research centres and others expected to follow. At the Precision Medicine Summit, healthcare providers, academic scientists and industry experts will have a uniquely focused opportunity to share knowledge, discuss challenges and opportunities.”

Speaking ahead of the event, Dr. Younis Kazim, CEO of Dubai Healthcare Corporation at the Dubai Health Authority, said, “With the use of technological developments such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, precision medicine allows doctors and researchers to accurately predict which treatment and prevention methods for a certain disease will work in which groups of patients. As well as helping to bolster the UAE’s overall healthcare technology development, we are optimistic that the event will have a significant impact on how we treat diseases – ultimately leading to better, and more cost-effective, personalised treatment programmes.”

Co-located alongside the Precision Medicine Exhibition and Summit is the ground-breaking EMERGE GHI investment forum, which will be a hotbed of innovation where aspiring Health Tech startups will interact with potential investors. Speaking ahead of the Emerge summit is GluCare.Health, the world’s first fully vertically integrated digital therapeutics + provider platform to employ continuous personal health data monitoring.

“The Emerge investment forum is a perfect springboard to showcase our expertise, advanced solutions, and phenomenal outcomes,” said Ali Hashemi, Co-Founder and Chairman at GluCare.Health. “The healthcare landscape in the region is evolving at a rapid pace with an increasing need for value based and outcome driven solutions available to both operators and patients. With diabetes recently being escalated from epidemic to pandemic in the region, we are looking to the event as a way to unearth new partnerships that help us further improve and reinvent diabetes care and make sure our platform is accessible to as many patients as possible.”