Dubai: As the UAE is being recognised as a country with one of the largest and fastest growing populations in the GCC with its population standing at 9.2 million currently, the demands on the health-care industry are bound to compound.

Keeping this in mind, all stake-holders of the health-care system — policy-makers, health-care providers, pharmaceutical and technological companies and insurance providers from UAE, GCC and the Middle East — came together on the first day-long Health Care Summit to discuss issues related to future health-care policies, health-care models, pricing, preventative care and innovation in the field.

Focusing on the importance of the consumer Princess Dina Mired, Director-General of the King Hussain Cancer Centre, Jordan, felt that the UAE needed to draw the consumer or the patient into the equation if it needed to implement any dynamic change in the health-care system.

“In the GCC the consumer is not part of the equation of the health-care reforms and the consumer is the real key to any change. We are focusing a lot on the provider. The consumer drives the quality and part of the gap in health literacy arises from the fact that the consumer does not know who to complain to or where to go if he does not like a hospital. Giving access to the consumer is the key to equity,” Princess Mired said at a panel discussion on moving the health-care policy in the right direction.

Delivering the keynote address, Dr Vivek Muthu, Health Care Director of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the organisers of the event, commented on the changing health-care landscape of the Middle East and the preparedness of the providers to embrace the change. “This is a critical time for health care in the Middle East, where citizens are increasingly encouraged to stay at home for treatment rather than go overseas and, because of this, the market is seeing incremental growth. However, with a rapidly growing population and lifestyle-related illnesses on the rise, one of the questions we will be exploring at the summit is, with the current challenges and opportunities that are presenting themselves, is the health-care landscape in the Middle East prepared to adapt and how.”

Dr Ameen Hussain Al Amiri, Assistant Undersecretary of Public Health Policy and Licensing at the Ministry of Health, emphasised greater public-private partnership in enhancing this sector, while Tawfik Khoja, Director-General of The Council of Health Ministers GCC States, said that wellness was the ultimate goal of health care. “We need our health-care system to be holistic, patient-centred, preventative in approach, have personalised care and be poised for research and innovation,” he said in his keynote address.

Speakers at the summit included Maha Barakat, Director-General of the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi (HAAD), Haider Al Yousuf, CEO, health funding at the Dubai Health Authority (DHA), and Kassem Alom, CEO and co founder of Noor Hospitals, among others.