The UAE is developing a national policy to guide how artificial intelligence and smart technology are used across its health system, from prevention to treatment to rehabilitation. It is being designed before wide adoption, to set the direction rather than catch up to it.

The challenge

Artificial intelligence and smart technology were beginning to reshape healthcare, through tools like predictive analytics, clinical decision support, and personalised medicine. The UAE wanted to make sure this shift improved care and stayed safe, fair, and available to everyone, rather than developing in a fragmented or uneven way. Doing that required a national direction, set deliberately, rather than letting each part of the health system adopt technology on its own terms.

The regulatory gap

What was needed was a single national framework that could guide the use of AI and smart technology across the whole health system, from prevention to treatment to rehabilitation, and across both public and private providers. It needed to set common priorities and standards, including for how health data is governed and shared securely, so that innovation could happen without compromising safety, fairness, or trust.

The approach

The Ministry of Health and Prevention began developing the National Policy to Promote Smart Health Services and Artificial Intelligence in the Health Sector in 2025. Rather than writing rigid rules, the policy is being designed to be adaptable, using future-foresight methods so it can keep pace with new technology. It sets national priorities and creates an enabling environment for research, startups, academia, and health-tech companies to develop AI-driven tools, supported by common data governance and interoperability standards. The policy was shaped through a structured process that mapped stakeholders across government, the private sector, academia, and the community, and it draws on international best practice and the experience of countries already advanced in this area. It is designed to be reviewed annually and every five years, so it can be updated as the technology evolves.

Results achieved

The policy is still being developed and has not yet entered its implementation phase, which is planned for 2026. So the outcomes below are the effects the Ministry expects once it is in force, rather than results already observed. The Ministry anticipates that the policy will strengthen health data governance and digital health regulation, expand regional and international partnerships in smart health and AI, build digital and AI infrastructure, equip the national health workforce with digital skills, encourage research and innovation, and apply AI across areas like health administration, logistics, and planning. The Ministry intends to monitor the policy from the moment it launches and to carry out a full impact study to assess its long-term effect on health services.

The transferable lesson

Setting policy before a technology is widely adopted is harder than reacting to it, but it has an advantage. It lets a country shape the direction of change rather than chase it. Because the outcomes here are still projected rather than proven, this case is best read as an example of anticipatory policy design, the deliberate choice to build the framework while the technology is still emerging. Its real value to other regulators will become clear once the policy is implemented and its effects can be measured against what was intended.