Aisha Legge had every reason to hesitate. The 53-year-old HR leader, who moved to Abu Dhabi from the UK thirty years ago, had a family history that frightened her. Breast cancer on her mother’s side. Ovarian cancer on her father’s. When she heard about the Emirati Genome Programme during the Covid pandemic, she was not sure she wanted to know what was in her own DNA. But as a mother of four, she felt a pull she could not ignore.
“If I drop dead,” she said, “what information would I leave behind for my children?”
She opted in. Genomic analysis revealed a BRCA1 mutation linked to ovarian cancer, a silent risk she had carried without knowing. Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi recommended risk-reducing surgery. Three weeks later, she underwent the procedure. She is healthy today.
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Her story did not happen because of luck. It happened because of a system built deliberately over years, most of which she never saw.
What the patient does not see
“All of that happens in the background while the patient undergoes a completely normal journey,” Dimitris Moulavasilis, Group Chief Executive Officer of M42, told Khaleej Times. “Patients do not know that their medication has been matched to their genomics. They do not see the data running. The only thing they see is a doctor.”
What runs behind that normal journey is, as Moulavasilis described, one of the most ambitious health data architectures being built anywhere. More than 940,000 genomes have been sequenced through the Emirati Genome Programme, creating what officials describe as one of the world’s most diverse national genomic datasets. Clinical records are connected through Malafi, with M42 serving as custodian of 3.5 billion health records.
Wastewater across Abu Dhabi is tested at 100 monitoring points in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council, enabling infectious disease threats to be detected before they reach hospitals. Every newborn is screened for more than 830 treatable conditions. Twenty-two thousand couples have completed pre-marital genetic screening. Pharmacogenomics, matching each patient’s medication and dose to their individual genetic profile, is now being integrated directly into electronic health records at the point of care through a collaboration between M42 and Oracle Health.
The system has already reached conditions that most health networks cannot yet address. A study of 500,000 genomes combined with clinical data identified the genetic parameters behind progressive blindness. A child with an RPE65 mutation received gene therapy that helped preserve her sight.
“You prevent at the newborn, at the pre-marital stage, you personalise through pharmacogenomics, and you predict before it happens so you act,” Moulavasilis said. “This way you ensure a healthier population, more inclusive societies, and you reduce the cost of care.”
The doctor’s changed day
For physicians working inside M42 facilities, the shift is already visible, though patients rarely notice it. An AI clinical platform, currently in testing at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Danat Al Emarat, and HealthPoint, allows doctors to query a patient’s entire medical record through natural language, receive real-time consultation summaries, handle clinical coding automatically, and access pharmacogenomic recommendations verbally during appointments.
“You ask in Arabic, in English, whatever language you need,” Moulavasilis said. “The system summarises the consultation, codes the diagnoses, retrieves care standards, and advises on medication based on the patient’s genetic profile. You have everything at your fingertips without switching between systems or opening files. You spend your time with the patient, not the screen.”
As M42 tests the platform, Moulavasilis is clear about the boundary it will not cross.
“The physician will ultimately make the decision and sign off on the examination,” he said. “AI is a clinical partner. It is not a replacement. We have not developed an AI physician, and this is not what we are building.”
Why Abu Dhabi moved faster
The gap between Abu Dhabi and comparable health systems elsewhere became clear to Moulavasilis at the Delphi Economic Forum in Greece, where he joined a panel on the future of healthcare.
“In France, in Greece, they just deployed an interoperable platform to collect health data, like Malafi,” he said. “They don’t have genome data. They have limited clinical records and now they are trying to figure out what they will do with them. I came to the panel and said — this is what we were doing in the past years. They had difficulty believing me. Whatever I said sounded futuristic to them.”
A senior figure from a US research laboratory visited Abu Dhabi and suggested a potential genomic research collaboration, unaware of what already existed on the ground. Moulavasilis recalled the conversation:
“I said, ‘What are you talking about? We have sequenced 940,000 genomes,’” Moulavasilis said. “He did not believe me. He said he did not think this existed. I think the world cannot absorb the speed at which the UAE and Abu Dhabi are developing.”
He attributes that speed not to M42 but to the institution that enables it.
“We are not providers. We are national UAE assets,” he said. “The Department of Health is a forward-thinking regulator and how it is pushing the future health agenda is extraordinary. It is allowing companies like M42 to push the boundaries of what is possible. The credit belongs there.”
What comes next
A mental health platform is in development. Wearables integration is planned. Agentic AI may eventually help manage lower-acuity chronic conditions, under physician oversight and Department of Health licensing. Moulavasilis has set 2027 as the year he believes Abu Dhabi’s position as a global centre of healthcare will be confirmed, as biotech and pharmaceutical companies accelerate their presence in the emirate.
With 32 years in the field and direct experience across 30 countries, he does not make the comparison lightly.
“There is no other system in the planet like Abu Dhabi,” he said. “I think what we will be introducing as an ecosystem in 2027 will confirm that Abu Dhabi is a centre of healthcare globally”
Source: Khaleej Times