Telemedicine has the potential to revolutionise the UAE's healthcare sector

Analysis

The UAE's rapidly growing population, thriving tourism sector, and growing prevalence of lifestyle diseases are placing an increasing strain on medical institutions to provide quality healthcare to a growing number of patients.

Over the past decade, the Emirates have become a booming tourist destination. Dubai International Airport is now officially the world's busiest airport, welcoming over 70 million passengers in 2014. Many of these passengers come to the UAE for medical treatment, or require treatment while visiting the Emirates.  This pressure on the industry will only increase over time as Dubai seeks to actively attract 500,000 medical tourists per year by 2020, according to the Government's medical tourism strategy announced last year. This would allow the Emirate to equal medical tourism destinations such as the US and Singapore. To help accommodate this influx, the Dubai Health Strategy 2013 - 2025 aims to build three new major hospitals, add forty new healthcare centres, and host fifty international medical conferences, but the strain on the healthcare sector will still be significant, especially in rural areas of the UAE.