Ahead of India, Australia, Spain, Belgium and Finland
UAE, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai the only Arab hubs in the global top 20
- Abu Dhabi ranks 17th globally—surpassing Toronto and Seoul—combining healthcare digitization, governed deployment, capital formation and preventive health innovation
- Dubai contributes through NABIDH, Dubai Healthcare City, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, and a commercially active private-healthcare environment for AI-enabled health services, medical tourism, preventive health, and platform-based care
- Middle East emerged as a region of strategic investments, government support, and fast-moving health-tech ambition, but one that still faces challenges in interoperability, data sharing, and governance alignment
- Global AI Competitiveness Index Part 6: Analyzing AI from a BioTech, Healthcare and Longevity Perspective ranks the United Arab Emirates #15 among countries in AI for BioTech, Healthcare and Longevity, with Abu Dhabi ranked #17 among global city hubs.
- The Index identifies the UAE as one of the world’s strongest emerging national systems in this domain, with competitiveness built not on the same legacy-research model as the United States, United Kingdom, China, Switzerland, or Germany, but on a more platform-driven combination of healthcare transformation, capital formation, digital-government execution, advanced health-data infrastructure, and internationally oriented clinical ecosystems in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
- Abu Dhabi is central to this national position due to its focus on institutional healthcare transformation, AI-enabled clinical services, genomics, and strategic investment, anchored by organizations such as M42 and Malaffi.
- The UAE’s highest-scoring dimensions are identified as capital formation, healthcare system digital readiness, regulatory and governance capacity, data and deployment conditions, and longevity/preventive-health innovation. Its main relative constraint remains the depth of indigenous biomedical research and specialist AI-biotech company density compared with the world’s most mature research ecosystems.
The UAE has secured 15th place globally in the latest Global AI Competitiveness Index released by Deep Knowledge Group, ranking ahead of India, Australia, Spain, Belgium, and Finland in the fields of AI in BioTech, healthcare, and longevity. The Index surveyed a global landscape of 8,000 companies, 4,200 investors, and 240 hubs contributing to the growth of AI technologies in these sectors.
The Index Committee includes Dame Jennifer Mary Shipley, Former Prime Minister of New Zealand; King Au, Former Executive Director of the Hong Kong Financial Services Development Council; and Rudolf Scharping, Former Federal Minister of Defence, Germany.
Abu Dhabi, securing 17th place globally, surpasses cities such as Toronto and Seoul, thanks to its advancements in healthcare digitization, governed deployment, capital formation, and innovative preventive health solutions.
Dubai contributes significantly through initiatives such as NABIDH, Dubai Healthcare City, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, and a commercially active private healthcare environment that supports AI-enabled health services, medical tourism, preventive health, and platform-based care.
Unlike generic AI rankings, this edition focuses on biomedical deployment-readiness: whether countries and city hubs have the scientific infrastructure, healthcare digitization, governed data access, regulatory capacity, capital formation, talent, and clinical-commercial pathways required to convert AI capability into real-world biomedical value.
According to the Index, the UAE emerged as one of the strongest non-traditional leaders in the world. Its position is not built on the same model as the largest legacy biomedical powers. Instead, the UAE scores strongly because it combines state-backed healthcare modernization, platform-building, digital-health infrastructure, capital access, regulatory readiness, and visible execution environments in ways that give it a stronger deployment profile than its research depth alone would suggest. In biomedical AI, that distinction matters: competitiveness depends not only on research output, but on whether an ecosystem can connect policy, health systems, data infrastructure, commercialization, and capital formation into repeatable pathways for adoption.
“Abu Dhabi plays a central role in that national position. The Index highlights the emirate’s efforts to build a life-sciences and health-technology platform around AI-enabled clinical services, genomics, data-driven care, and strategic investment, with M42 serving as a particularly visible anchor across AI, precision health, and genomics, and Malaffi providing a health-information exchange foundation for more connected care. This is one of the reasons Abu Dhabi enters the global city-hub ranking: it is increasingly functioning not merely as a site of healthcare demand, but as a platform-building environment for governed biomedical AI deployment,” said Dmitry Kaminskiy, General Partner of Deep Knowledge Group, and co-author of the Index.
“Dubai strengthens the national picture in a different but complementary way. The UAE profile explicitly ties the country’s competitiveness to NABIDH, Dubai Healthcare City, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, and the emirate’s broader commercially active private-healthcare ecosystem. In practical terms, that means Dubai is becoming more than a venue for healthcare branding or isolated pilots. It is contributing to a broader UAE environment in which AI-enabled health services, medical tourism, preventive health, private-platform care, and commercialization pathways are beginning to reinforce one another,” Dmitry added.
“The future of AI leadership will depend less on isolated research excellence and more on the capacity to operationalize innovation across healthcare systems, governance and capital markets – an area where the UAE is progressing remarkably fast,” said Dr. Patrick Glauner, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Deggendorf Institute of Technology (Germany); Innovation Manager for AI at Krones; Former Fellow at CERN and co-author of the report.
That logic aligns with the broader Dubai biomedical-AI thesis already emerging in Deep Knowledge Group’s ecosystem work on the emirate: public-sector execution, healthcare digitization, commercialization infrastructure, capital access, and international market connectivity are giving Dubai a more practical deployment environment than many ecosystems that appear stronger on research alone. In that sense, the UAE’s national ranking and Abu Dhabi’s hub ranking should not be read in isolation. They reflect a wider UAE pattern in which Abu Dhabi’s institutional platform-building and Dubai’s clinically and commercially active health ecosystem are increasingly operating as complementary strengths.
“The most important point is that the leading systems in this AI Index edition are not simply those with AI activity in the abstract,” continued Dmitry. “They are the places that can turn AI capacity into deployable biomedical systems — where clinical validation, governed data access, regulatory credibility, and commercialization pathways work together. The UAE is increasingly significant because it is building exactly that kind of platform-driven environment.”
The Index also makes clear that biomedical AI competitiveness differs structurally from enterprise AI or generic digital innovation. AI in biotech, healthcare, and longevity must function under higher evidentiary, regulatory, and trust requirements because it touches clinical decisions, patient data, diagnostics, drug development, prevention, and health-system resilience. That is why the Index gives particular weight to factors such as healthcare system digital readiness, data governance, clinical validation, regulatory capacity, and long-cycle capital formation.
The Index also highlights an important shift in how competitiveness in this sector should be understood globally. The next phase of leadership is moving away from research promise alone and toward institutionalization: the ability to turn AI capability into safe, regulated, and repeatable biomedical operating systems. In that wider global transition, the UAE stands out because it is already assembling many of the required system layers — healthcare digitization, governed deployment, capital formation, platform infrastructure, and preventive-health innovation — into a more coherent national model.
The Index’s regional spotlight on the Middle East reinforces that point. It describes the region as one of the fastest-rising areas for AI in healthcare and biotech, driven by strategic investments and government support, but still constrained by interoperability and data-sharing challenges. The UAE’s relative strength is that it is already further along than many peers in building the institutional and infrastructure conditions needed for AI-enabled healthcare and life-sciences deployment.
