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GCC hospital markets at a crossroads

Change is afoot for private hospital operators in the GCC with mandatory insurance rollouts and private sector-friendly reforms offset by squeezed margins and an exodus of foreign nationals. More big US non-profits have followed in the footsteps of their peers Cleveland and Mayo and investors are pouring money into new developments in some markets - but steering well clear of others. Here is our round-up after several weeks interviewing local sources for HBI Intelligence. 

GCC hospital markets: not for the faint-hearted

The GCC's private hospital sector had a highly volatile second half of the 2010s despite being the target of huge foreign investments in the first. Public data shows huge fluctuations in annual growth in 2014-2019 across Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Dubai, UAE.

Aster shows Covid impact on India and GCC

Thanks to Covid, Aster DM, the GCC to India clinic, hospital and pharmacy chain, saw a 25% drop in revenue across both geographies in April. May and June have seen improvements with a return to normal expected in the autumn, providing there is no second wave. We look in detail at the impact of Covid in March to June and report full year results to March 2020.

Coronavirus compounding expat exodus in GCC countries

The population of GCC countries is set to fall by up to 10%, according to a report by global forecasting and quantitative analysis group Oxford Economics, as coronavirus encourages the largely foreign workforce to leave. HBI speaks to a source in the Gulf to find out how this might effect the insurance / healthcare market there.

Dispatches from Arab Health

Arab Health never seems to get any smaller. HBI travelled to Dubai and spoke to some of the 84,500 attendees and 4,150 exhibiting companies. But, strip out the hoop-la, and what is really going on at ground level? Here are our main takeaways from the four-day long event:

Interview: Erik Koornneef, head of AI at Cognit

Healthcare Nova speaks to Erik Koornneef, UAE-Based head of Watson Health at Cognit Technology Solutions, an AI solutions provider established as JV between Mubadala and IBM Watson with the aim to enable the adoption of artificial intelligence in the MENA region.

Interview: Dr Rajgopal Thirumalai, Vice President, Global Medical & Occupational Health, Unilever

Unilever runs a global health and prevention programme in over 90 countries for its 169,000  employees. How? What does Dr Thirumalai (known as Dr Raj) think of the private healthcare services sector? And what changes does he expect in the future? And what does he expect from digital health and AI? Dr Raj is also a non-executive independent director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise and a speaker at HBI 2018 on April 10-11 in London.

Interview: Dr Rajgopal Thirumalai, Vice President, Global Medical & Occupational Health, Unilever

Unilever runs a global health and prevention programme in over 90 countries for its 169,000  employees. How? What does Dr Thirumalai (known as Dr Raj) think of the private healthcare services sector? And what changes does he expect in the future? And what does he expect from digital health and AI? Dr Raj is also a non-executive independent director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise and a speaker at HBI 2018 on April 10-11 in London.

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