At Sanabil Venture Studio by Redesign Health, we empower founders at the earliest stages to build world-class healthcare companies. By leveraging Saudi Arabia's robust infrastructure and forward-thinking approach to innovation, we help turn transformative ideas into reality. Drawing from our experience of launching more than 60 companies that have touched the lives of over 15 million patients globally, we're bringing our proven venture-building expertise to accelerate healthcare transformation in the Kingdom.
Healthcare is at an Innovation Crossroads in the Kingdom
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is undergoing an ambitious healthcare transformation aligned with Vision 2030. At the heart of this reform is the Health Sector Transformation Program, which aims to revolutionize care delivery through increased private sector participation and technological innovation.
As the Kingdom shifts from public-led healthcare, Saudi Arabia is now witnessing a surge in private healthcare investments driven by a youthful, tech-savvy population and rising chronic disease rates that has created attractive opportunities to invest.
This transformation is made possible by some of the strongest stakeholder alignment we’ve seen globally across patients, physicians, insurers and the government to enhance the quality of/access to care, improve health outcomes and contain total healthcare costs. This convergence creates a meaningful opportunity for entrepreneurs to drive lasting innovation across the Saudi healthcare system and beyond.
Our Core Thematic Areas of Focus
We have identified seven initial core Thematic Areas that present the greatest opportunity to build exciting startups to address pressing challenges and drive transformational innovation within the Saudi healthcare ecosystem. These areas guide our approach to venture building and form the foundation of exploring specific Opportunity Zones (more on those later).
1. Accelerating Value-Based Care
Transitioning from traditional fee-for-service models, Saudi Arabia is embracing value-based care through its Health Transformation Program that places emphasis on improving patient outcomes, optimizing total cost of care and aligning stakeholder needs. This approach incentivizes healthcare providers based on improving patient health outcomes, promoting preventive care, and reducing unnecessary interventions. It is expected that by 2030, ~22 million Saudis will be managed under value-based arrangements by CHI1. Saudi Arabia provides a unique opportunity to be the global leader in value-based care adoption and will require the development of both clinical and infrastructure solutions to support this shift.
2. Chronic Disease Management & Disease Prevention
There is a growing chronic disease burden that is leading to an increased focus on proactive disease management and prevention. Total costs associated with chronic disease in Saudi Arabia are expected to grow ~60% from 2020 to 20302, which drives the need for new initiatives focused on screening programs, enhancing public health awareness, and promoting healthy lifestyle changes. Diabetes alone affects ~20%3 of Saudis and its prevalence has grown ~10x in the last 40 years4. This has led to a focus on early intervention programs that could reduce long-term treatment costs by up to ~20%. Enabling physicians, caregivers and patients with digital tools to proactively manage these conditions will be critical to mitigate the long term impact of chronic conditions.
3. Longevity & Wellness
Promoting longevity and wellness has become a central theme within the Kingdom as evidenced by the 2030 Vision goal of increasing life expectancy to 80 years old. Focused efforts by the Saudi Health Council are being directed towards encouraging active lifestyles, balanced nutrition, regular health screenings and behavioral change to increase life expectancy and shift from a model of reactive to preventative care. Enhanced investment in longevity & wellness today will meaningfully impact the overall health of the population over time as demographic shifts predict the Saudi population over 60 years old is expected to grow ~5x (~5% today vs. ~24% in 2050)5 in the next 25 years. Models that focus on consumer empowerment and engagement will help drive improved outcomes around health & wellness.
4. Shifting Sites of Care
The Health Transformation Program is pushing the care delivery model to evolve beyond a traditional health system / hospital-led approach to a more developed outpatient ecosystem that puts primary care at the center of the patient journey. This new emphasis on the primary care setting coupled with the goal of having each Saudi visit a primary care physician 4 times per year is expected to increase the demand for additional clinics in the Kingdom by ~4,000 by 20306. This shift aims to increase access to care, lower total cost of care, reduce burden on hospitals, and provide care in more comfortable settings for both patients and providers. There is significant opportunity to develop digital tools to support the growing needs of primary care / outpatient providers and enhance the care experience for patients.
5. Liberating Healthcare Data & Interoperability
Data is the currency of healthcare transformation and efforts are underway to enhance data interoperability across healthcare systems, ensuring seamless and secure information exchange. The NPHIES platform is driving innovation and provides a unified health record & financial information of ~32 million people driven through integrations with over 5,0007 government and private health institutions. The alignment around data centralization creates exciting opportunities in the areas of care coordination, personalized medicine, clinical decision-making support, and patient data privacy. We believe there are exciting opportunities to build platform layers around data quality to help providers and LLMs work together to harmonize historical and real-time patient data.
6. Emerging Pharma and Device Ecosystem
Saudi Arabia is fostering a robust pharmaceutical and medical device landscape and encouraging more focused innovation and investment. This includes streamlining regulatory processes, supporting local manufacturing, increasing access to / prevalence of clinical trials and facilitating R&D to ensure the availability of local, advanced medical products and technologies. Saudi Arabia intends to increase its share of domestic pharma manufacturing from 20% to 40% to meet both local demand and also increases its exports by ~3x to ~US$5B before 20308. Software and workflow support will be required to help advance the development of product-based innovation in the Kingdom.
7. Healthcare Workforce Enablement
The Kingdom aims to recruit ~175,000 healthcare professionals by 20309 while placing an emphasis on local talent development. This challenge mirrors global healthcare workforce trends, where burnout, high turnover rates, and increased operational complexity have created systemic strain. Beyond recruitment, initiatives are in place to enhance workforce capabilities through training, support programs, and technological tools. Addressing challenges such as labor shortages and burnout is essential to maintain a resilient healthcare system. Supporting local Saudi healthcare workers and enabling the growing expat workforce will be critical to the success of the transformation initiatives within the healthcare system.
By empowering founders to build companies aligned to these thematic areas and others, Sanabil Venture Studio by Redesign Health can help catalyze a transformed Saudi healthcare system that is comprehensive, effective, and sets the global standard for healthcare innovation.
Introducing Opportunity Zones
While our Thematic Areas define broad focus areas, Opportunity Zones go deeper. These are specific, actionable sub-themes where innovation has the potential to create outsized impact. Opportunity Zones often span multiple Thematic areas and leverage cutting-edge technologies to address complex, systemic challenges. By focusing on these zones, we aim to empower founders to identify key pain points, engage expert advisors, and lay the groundwork for transformative solutions.
Examples of Opportunity Zones
- Chat-Based Care for an Evolving Landscape
- We envision an AI-forward platform that will employ a text-based interface that will utilize LLMs and multi-modal interfaces to create a more cohesive care experience for patients and providers. This is an interesting opportunity to penetrate a digital-friendly user base of Saudi patients, caregivers, and providers.
- Digital Tools to Support Management of Chronic Conditions
- Chronic disease has become an increasing burden on the Saudi healthcare system. An opportunity exists for a platform that leverages AI / technology at the individual patient data level to provide customized care plans and personalized interventions to ensure more effective and targeted care.
- Consumer Forward Approach to Longevity & Wellness
- We see the need for a D2C led longevity platform to support everything health and wellness that utilizes genomic data to help tailor personal recommendations and interventions. The solution could be a one-stop shop for all things wellness that incorporates features all the way from personalized diet / fitness plans to the evaluation of biomarkers of aging and disease progression.
The Role of AI in Healthcare Transformation
The advancement of AI technologies is central to driving innovation across our Thematic Areas and specific Opportunity Zones. We see five key AI capabilities that will be transformative for healthcare in the Kingdom:
- Agentic Methods: Automating complex healthcare workflows that require multistep logical reasoning across disparate data sources
- Generative Models: Reducing documentation burden while surfacing critical information to inform better clinical and business decisions
- Voice and Conversational Interaction: Enhancing patient engagement through natural communication interfaces
- Multimodal AI: Integrating diverse data types to support precision insights and diagnostics
- Predictive AI: Extracting and curating signal-rich structured datasets to enhance forecasting accuracy and optimize care delivery and operations
We ensure responsible AI adoption through explainable models overseen by licensed healthcare professionals. This human-in-the-loop approach fosters trust, ensures patient safety, and keeps human values at the center of AI-enabled care.
Building Together
At Sanabil Venture Studio by Redesign Health, we help founders overcome the unique challenges of healthcare innovation with an ecosystem and suite of capabilities supporting ideation and diligence, commercial traction, and execution. Our partnership combines Redesign Health's proven venture-building expertise with Sanabil's deep understanding of the Kingdom's innovation landscape. Together, we're working to establish Saudi Arabia as a world-leading hub of healthcare innovation with the potential to benefit patients both locally and globally.
Join Us
Are you building something transformative in healthcare? We welcome the opportunity to explore how we can support your vision and accelerate your impact on the future of healthcare. Reach out to us at buildwithus@redesignhealth.com.
1 https://vbhc.chi.gov.sa/assets/pdf/VBHC%20White%20Paper%20Version%20Final.pdf
2 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10709902/
3 https://hevolution.com/documents/20121/0/Enabling+A+Healthy+Lifespan+for+Saudi+Arabia.pdf
4 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337097557_Adults_Visual_Impairment_and_Blindness_-_An_Overview_of_Prevalence_and_Causes_in_Saudi_Arabia
5 https://data.who.int/countries/682
6 https://investsaudi.sa/medias/Primary-Healthcare-Centers-PPP-Opportunity-vF.pdf?context=bWFzdGVyfHJvb3R8MzY1ODk2fGFwcGxpY2F0aW9uL3BkZnxoZGYvaGNiLzkwNTMyNDQ0MjQyMjIucGRmfDUwZmI0YTE3M2ZjN2JiZjY4ZDBkMzdjNTMxMDhjNTI4NmZiZGJhODdjOWRmMTYzNzE4NDBlYTJiMDM2ZjIyMDA
7 https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/10/digital-innovation-reshaping-healthcare-middle-east/
8 https://globalbusinessoutlook.com/economy/saudi-vision-ushering-new-era-biotech-pharmaceutical-industries/#:~:text=Saudi%20Arabia%20intends%20to%20increase,37%25%20of%20the%20MENA%20market.
9 https://www.globalhealthsaudi.com/en/news/healthcare-insights/how_saudis_vision_2030_is_going_to_transform_the_healthcare.html#:~:text=Saudi%20Arabia's%20Vision%202030%20prioritizes,demand%20for%20qualified%20medical%20staff.
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