• One: Primary care services 2.0: Within the GCC countries, integrated technology enabled primary healthcare centres are the need of the hour. The lag in delivering care expected from them and the growing concern over their ability to survive in the current health care system has led to concerns and spurred an outlook for alternatives. The traditional models that have been conventionally delivering primary care in many GCC countries have not evolved at the pace that was needed, especially with growing health services demand from patients and the growing burden of chronic diseases. Hence, we can expect the proportion of spending on primary care-led or supported propositions to rise significantly as new models emerge and as technology enables us to bridge the gap between traditional health care models and the existing service offerings.

• Two: Development of specialised centres of excellence: Future investments in the GCC health sector are expected to be driven primarily to fill the quality gap in health service delivery as opposed to just a demand-supply gap in physical infrastructure, where significant investments have already been made in most GCC countries. We have seen a visible shift in some GCC countries where a large portion of upcoming projects are in specialised facilities focusing on one or a limited number of specialties with the aim to develop centres of excellence (CoEs). CoEs are healthcare facilities focused on providing high-quality care through multidisciplinary teams. They have the ability to charge premium prices compared to their general hospital counterparts, given the superior quality and technologically advanced services that they are able to provide. A CoE proposition also helps create differentiation in the market, as it ensures provision of end-to-end patient care maintaining the continuum and could result in improved clinical outcomes in the specialties and services the centre is focused on.

>> Read more