Source: Forbes Middle East
Although they may not be aware of it, you would be hard-pressed today to find a U.A.E. resident that hasn’t visited or interacted with a healthcare entity owned by the PureHealth Group. The healthcare conglomerate is the largest in MENA, with over 25 hospitals, more than 100 clinics, and 160 labs, as well as a health insurance provider, pharmacies, healthtech companies, procurement, and investments. “Having all of these assets under one umbrella gives us the ability and the agility to provide holistic care to our patients with the maximum positive impact to them,” says Shaista Asif, Cofounder and Group COO of PureHealth, stressing that the group’s ultimate goal is to be able to achieve longevity for people, helping them live healthier for longer.
In January 2022, PureHealth shareholder, Alpha Dhabi Holding (ADH), announced that it had entered into an agreement with state fund ADQ to consolidate several companies within PureHealth, making it the largest healthcare provider in MENA. The entities under its umbrella include the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA), the National Health Insurance Company PJSC (Daman), the Abu Dhabi Stem Cells Center, Ambulatory Healthcare Services, Rafed, Yas Clinic Group, The Life Corner, Tamouh Healthcare, The Medical Office, Pure Lab, and ONE Health.
The agreement saw ADQ become the largest shareholder in PureHealth, along with other stakeholders, including ADH, the International Holding Company (IHC), AH Capital, and Ataa Financial Investments. However, not content with having the largest healthcare network in the region, PureHealth also started looking overseas. “Our investment strategy is to grow into international markets, invest in companies that add value to our investment portfolio and our operational competencies as well,” explains Asif.
In September 2022, PureHealth announced that it had entered into a definitive purchase agreement to acquire a $500 million minority equity investment in Ardent Health Services (Ardent), the fourth largest privately-held acute care hospital operator in the U.S., with 30 hospitals, more than 200 sites of care across six states, and approximately 26,000 employees. “Ardent was a no-brainer for us because it is a high-quality provider and a market leader across the six states that it operates in,” says Asif. Investing in the U.S. market was also a strategic move. “We are looking very closely to building relationships with leading U.S. healthcare companies because the U.S. market is well known for its level of medical research and delivery of outstanding healthcare services.”
According to the group COO, investing outside of the U.A.E. serves PureHealth’s ultimate goal. “We’re looking to leveraging these partnerships to advance even faster on the science of longevity and to bring the next level of care into the U.A.E., where we will undoubtedly benefit from the research and development,” she explains.
“Life expectancies all over the world are increasing and the number of centenarians is also on the rise, but while there is a huge amount to celebrate in increased longevity, we believe that it is equally important to discuss improved health span,” says Mona Hammami, leader in the Middle East for the McKinsey Health Institute. “We have added 20 years to life span since 1960, but we spend 10 of those additional years in mediocre or poor health. To close this gap, technology can play a critical role in prevention, early diagnosis of health challenges, and enabling people to live independently and engage socially for many more years.”
With a large and broad portfolio of healthcare providers under its belt, in October 2022, PureHealth announced that it plans to take people’s average lifespan in the U.A.E. from 78 to 101 by 2071, buoyed by acquisitions that enable it to become a 360-degree healthcare provider. The group intends to support an individual with all their healthcare needs, including pre-birth genetic testing, maternity and childcare, oncology, urgent care, long-term care, mental health, and stem cell therapies. “We’re focused on adding years to your life and life to your years. We’re on a journey to unlock time,” says Asif.
Asif’s own journey in this space began over 20 years ago. She started her career in 2001 in her home country of Pakistan as a consultant before joining local telecom provider Mobilink in 2003 in engineering as head of project management and climbing the ranks to be its director of enterprise solutions. Three years later, while still working for Mobilink, she connected with Farhan Malik, who is today PureHealth’s CEO. The pair decided to go into business, choosing healthcare because of the opportunities it presented for modernization. They wanted to merge technology with healthcare operations to offer a competitive and effective service. “Healthcare and how it was delivered was not optimal, and we wanted to do something about that,” remembers Asif. In 2006, using personal savings, they established PureHealth Medical Supplies in the U.A.E., focusing on providing diagnostic services. The following year, Asif resigned from her job at Mobilink to focus on her new startup. She also co-founded UTrade in 2008, focused on digitizing traditional trading, but she exited in 2013 by selling her stake in the company.
By 2012, PureHealth Medical Supplies was offering data-driven solutions and starting to grow its reputation as a tech-enabler in healthcare. In early 2020, IHC acquired 31.5% of the company. A year later, in March 2021, ADQ signed an agreement to merge its healthcare support services entities, Rafed and Union71, with PureHealth Medical Supplies, transferring its ownership of the two entities to the group and receiving a stake in PureHealth in return. The merger was completed in October 2021, according to IHC. In early 2021, ADH—a subsidiary of IHC—also acquired 31.5% of PureHealth Medical Supplies. And a few months later, IHC transferred its 31.5% stake in PureHealth to ADH, increasing the equity of ADH to 63%. In January 2022, following the ADH and ADQ agreement that made ADQ the largest shareholder of PureHealth, the company officially changed its name to PureHealth Group.
Using technology, PureHealth is now planning to make healthcare more accessible as a way of achieving longevity. Asif explains that the healthcare industry today is designed to be “reactive rather than proactive,” whereby people go to hospitals and doctors only when they feel unwell. Shifting the way the industry is practiced could yield benefits for individuals and economies. “A healthy individual costs less to themselves and to the ecosystem, and they contribute more to the economy. So financially, it makes more sense,” Asif says. “We intend to digitize our existing user journeys to offer more convenience and ease to our patients.”
In the U.A.E., the healthcare industry seems to be well-positioned to integrate technology into its operations and services. According to McKinsey & Company, the combined digital-health market in Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. could be worth $4 billion by 2026, as smartphone penetration rates in the two countries are among the world’s highest, at an estimated 93%, with citizens using the devices to access digitized public services. The U.A.E. government has also been ramping up its healthcare budget, with over $1.3 billion out of its $17.2 billion 2023 budget being allocated to healthcare and community protection.
“We believe digital healthcare tools can flip this model by offering a more holistic insight into a patient’s health over time,” says Khaldoon Bushnaq, Cofounder of Alma Health. “Providers focused on improving clinical outcomes should be leveraging every interaction with patients to collect the right data over time in a real-world setting and providing it to their clinicians to develop a complete picture of the patient’s health for predictive analyses.”
According to Asif, PureHealth Group is currently implementing a healthcare-centric cloud that will be a one-stop-shop for the whole ecosystem, including hospital, insurance, and lab information systems, IoT, telehealth, genomics, and third-party apps that the group is going to be hosting. “In this process, through technology and active monitoring, we are going to shift the paradigm from reactive care to preventive care,” she explains. The group has already started implementing the cloud into its operations and across the U.A.E.
“The importance of technology for achieving a compelling longevity solution cannot be underestimated,” says Sven-Olaf Vathje, partner and head of the Health & Life Sciences practice at Oliver Wyman in India, the Middle East and Africa. “Wearables technology can enable continuous tracking of core vital data, both for measuring data that flows into a personal longevity baseline and for providing personalized feedback on both whether and how longevity interventions work. Biotechnology can help understand individual predispositions to diseases and help personalize healthy-living programs. In the future, gene-editing technology may reach a point of evolution where cellular interventions could directly impact longevity.”
PureHealth is also partnering with several U.A.E. entities and government bodies on a number of initiatives in the healthcare industry. In 2016, it was awarded a contract to manage and operate all the medical laboratories under the U.A.E.’s Ministry of Health and Prevention. In March 2022, it established a joint venture with Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health and healthtech company G42 to manage and operate the Center for Digital Health Abu Dhabi, the largest big data healthcare project in the U.A.E. PureHealth is currently working with the U.A.E. government on a project called Riayati, which is a digital healthcare platform for the National Unified Medical Records program, unifying healthcare records for individuals and creating a single record across public and private healthcare facilities. And the group is working on introducing a personalized life coach for everyone connected to the PureHealth network to help guide patients on preventive, proactive, and immediate care.
“We’re working towards pushing healthcare to the edge as close as possible to the users as much as the technology allows, understanding every individual’s uniqueness by studying their genetic makeup and delivering care to them through personalized medicine,” says Asif. “Being able to do that; that is the future.”