AI, accessibility, and lots of investment: Global Health Exhibition 2024

[MattQuirk]

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with HPE OEM Sales Specialist Joe Comerford as he looks back on the healthcare innovation and investment on show at Saudi Arabia’s Global Health Exhibition 2024 in Riyadh.  Here's what Joe had to share: 

The Global Health Exhibition has a growing reputation as one of the premier health events in the international calendar.

This year, it wasn’t hard to see why. With SAR 50 billion in new Saudia healthcare investments announced on its first day, the event almost immediately lived up to expectations.

Saudi Arabia is accelerating towards its Vision 2030 goals, helped by the innovation of technology vendors such as HPE OEM partner GE Healthcare, who we joined in the exhibition hall. Here are a few of my takeaways from the show floor.  

Realizing AI use cases

AI-powered solutions in hospitals are a broad church, with use cases ranging from medical imaging to building management. We saw almost the full spectrum on show at the Global Health Exhibition: advanced diagnostics, health information management, and remote monitoring, to name a few examples.

At the exhibition’s center was a fully virtual reality and augmented reality-enabled virtual hospital: a true glimpse into the world’s future healthcare services, using AI to rank and prioritize urgent patient needs according to where intervention is required.

These are not mere party pieces. With the promise of advanced algorithms capable of rapidly processing imaging for urgent diagnoses, as well as virtual monitoring of patients, these advancements could be life changing for patients—particularly those living in remote or rural regions where physical travel to a hospital environment is difficult or impossible.

Making high level healthcare more accessible

Saudi Arabia has already made huge strides in the quality of its healthcare through concentrated investment in business, education, and infrastructure. The nation has come a long way, with high quality healthcare now increasingly accessible to the general population, thanks largely to its Vision 2030 initiative.

HPE OEM fully supports Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 project, both in principle and in practice. Embodying this support is HPE’s partnership with the leading manufacturer and digital solutions provider, Alfanar, to bring enterprise IT production to the Kingdom and accelerate the development of the country’s tech ecosystem.

Located in the city of Riyadh, the development is producing thousands of units annually from the leading HPE ProLiant Gen11 server family. Not only that, but the Riyadh facility also provides job opportunities for the local population, including the employment of several hundred women. 

Powering leading solutions in healthcare 

As server, storage, and networking providers in the region, we are proud supporters of Saudi Arabia’s healthcare boom. We had several HPE OEM partners exhibiting at the event, including GE Healthcare, to showcase their pioneering medical imaging solutions.

The leading global medical technology and digital solutions innovator recently named HPE OEM as Supplier of the Year—a testament to the work and investment we've put into supporting the medical imaging solutions they are taking to market.

HPE’s deep rooted commitment to Saudi Arabia goes back more than 30 years. Having recently moved our regional headquarters to Riyadh, our roots in the country are only deepening.

With a planned 65% increase in private sector healthcare investment in by 2030, I look forward to seeing the region continue to prosper—not least at next year’s exhibition.