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Saudi: Global Health Exhibition sees investments worth over $13.3bln

RIYADH — Saudi Health Minister Fahd Al-Jalajel said that the volume of investments in the seventh edition of the Global Health Exhibition, which kicked off in Riyadh on Monday, has exceeded SR50 billion ($13.3 billion).

Inaugurating the exhibition, the minister said that Saudi Arabia will be a center for confronting global health challenges, thanks to artificial intelligence and the development of the workforce. "Saudi Arabia is the first regional country to reach maturity level 4 in the field of regulating medicines and vaccines, and the absence of trans fats in its products," he said.

Al-Jalajel stated that the value of Saudi pharmaceutical market will reach about SR72 billion ($19.2 billion) by 2030, while the private health insurance market is expected to reach SR40 billion ($10.6 billion) by the end of the current decade.

“We meet today at a time when the world is facing multiple challenges in the health sector; the top of which is the challenge of human cadres, as the World Health Organization has predicted a global shortage of health cadres by 2030, accounting for 10 million health practitioners.”

The Ministry of Health is sponsoring the seventh edition of the exhibition, with support of the Health Sector Transformation Program. It is organized by Tahaluf, which is a strategic alliance between Informa PLC, the Saudi Federation for Cyber Security and Programming (SAFCSP), and the Events Investment Fund (EIF).

The first day sessions of the three-day event dealt with topics such as investment strategies and portfolios, global market analysis for biotechnology and healthcare, the NHS’s ambient sound technology and generative artificial intelligence program, a lung cancer detection program using artificial intelligence, the use of artificial intelligence to enhance diagnostic accuracy, and strategies to reduce diagnostic errors in clinical practice.