Bilal Muhsin

Connection Beyond Connectivity The Future of Intelligent Healthcare in the GCC

As healthcare systems across the GCC move toward intelligent, digitally connected care, the focus is shifting from technology adoption to real impact. In this interview, Hospitals Magazine speaks with Bilal Muhsin, Executive Vice President and President of BD’s Connected Care Segment, on the future of connected healthcare and how “connection beyond connectivity” is enabling safer, more efficient, and resilient health systems.

Welcoming in the new year, how does BD reflect on its role in supporting healthcare transformation across the GCC, and what priorities will guide your mission in 2026?

As we look back on the progress made over the past year, our commitment to healthcare transformation across the Gulf Cooperation Council is stronger than ever. We operate with an innovative and collaborative mindset, aligned with each nation’s vision to build modern, resilient, and patient-centric health systems. We see the GCC as a key hub for global health innovation and excellence in care, and our mission is to accelerate this journey by delivering sustainable, digitally connected healthcare solutions.

In 2025, we announced significant investments in the region including establishing a regional manufacturing footprint to support customers while driving innovation in the GCC. We invested in local talent and continued to demonstrate how BD’s Signature Programmes help address the most critical and systemic challenges facing healthcare today: patient safety, workforce sustainability, and operational efficiency. Additionally, we showcased our Connected Care innovations, including the BD Incada™ Platform, to drive meaningful benefits for our customers with, efficient and effective care delivery.

Looking ahead to 2026, our priorities are to advance digital adoption, enhance patient safety, and equip clinicians with intelligent tools that drive outcomes. We will continue to invest in local talent, collaborate with government institutions, and provide clinical training through the BD Learning Academy to empower healthcare professionals across the region. BD is here to stay, for patients, providers, and health systems across the GCC, while setting a global standard for excellence in healthcare.

  With the debut of BD Incada™ Connected Care Platform last year, BD ushered in a new era of connected healthcare. How do these solutions help hospitals and health systems tackle their biggest challenges, and how do they advance the BD Signature Programmes’ goals of safer, more efficient, and more resilient care?

At BD, our approach to innovation in the GCC is anchored in our three Signature Programmes that I mentioned earlier. Our Patient Safety Programme is focused on reducing preventable harm by minimizing medication errors and adverse events, enabling safer, more reliable care delivery. The Healthcare Workers Programme addresses clinician burnout and workforce shortages by simplifying low-value tasks, improving usability, and allowing caregivers to spend more time where it matters most, at the bedside. Meanwhile, the Efficiency Programme helps healthcare systems identify waste, unlock capacity, and improve performance across the continuum of care.

BD’s Connected Care strategy is how we operationalize these programmes at scale. Available first on the new BD Pyxis Pro, the BD Incada™ Connected Care Platform will bring together pharmacy automation, medication dispensing, infusion delivery, and advanced monitoring into a single, interoperable ecosystem. By connecting devices, data, and workflows across care settings, the platform will provide enterprise-wide visibility, near-real time insights, and AI-enabled analytics that support clinical and operational decision-making.

Through this connected ecosystem, healthcare systems can move from fragmented, reactive processes to integrated, proactive, data-driven care, improving medication safety, reducing manual workload for clinicians, and optimizing workflows across departments. This directly advances the outcomes defined by BD’s Signature Programmes: safer patients, empowered healthcare workers, and more efficient healthcare operations.

In the Gulf region, where national digital health strategies are accelerating and investments in smart healthcare infrastructure continue to grow, BD’s Connected Care solutions offer a scalable foundation for system-wide transformation. By enabling interoperability, automation, and actionable analytics at an enterprise, and ultimately national, level, BD supports healthcare systems in achieving sustainable, high-quality outcomes aligned with their long-term healthcare ambitions.

You frequently speak about “connection beyond connectivity.” How does this philosophy reshape the way BD approaches innovation in the Connected Care segment?

We believe that connectivity is only the foundation; the real value lies in the intelligence that flows across it. Connectivity is about moving data from one point to another point, such as medical device data integrated into hospital information systems for documentation. Connection is about activating data to improve outcomes. In healthcare, medical devices generate massive volumes of information every day, but without context, prioritization, and clinical relevance, data integration alone does not improve outcomes. Our approach at BD is to embed intelligence at every layer: from bedside devices to cloud infrastructure, to AI-powered analytics that generate meaningful actionable insights.

This philosophy drives how we approach every aspect of BD’s Connected Care Segment, from designing devices that generate clinically relevant information, to integrating legacy systems, to building AI-powered analytics that enable proactive decision-making. It ensures that every solution is purpose-built to improve care, reduce inefficiencies and empower clinicians.

A few examples would be our advanced hemodynamic monitoring solutions like the HemoSphere Alta™ Monitor and our infusion and medication delivery technologies including the BD Alaris™ Infusion System, the only modular and most comprehensive infusion system in the U.S. Pharmacy automation and robotics including the BD Pyxis™, connected medication dispensing solutions to help ensure medications and supplies are available when and where they’re needed. Additionally, platforms like BD Incada™ exemplify this approach.

By providing enterprise-level visibility across connected devices and workflows, BD Incada™ transforms fragmented data into actionable insights that inform faster, smarter decisions at the point of care. This is how BD ensures that every innovation supports patient safety and reinforces our Signature Programmes through intelligent and system-level design, creating a healthcare ecosystem where connectivity truly delivers impact.

Talent shortages remain a major challenge globally. What role does BD play in upskilling healthcare professionals, particularly as care becomes increasingly digital and AI-enabled?

Addressing the talent gap is one of the most pressing challenges in our industry. As healthcare systems adopt more digital and AI-driven solutions, the need for technically skilled, data-literate, and clinically adaptable professionals has never been greater. BD’s role is twofold: to design innovative technologies and invest in education that empowers clinicians to use these technologies confidently.

In the GCC, facilities like the BD Training Center in Riyadh and the BD Center for Safety and Clinical Excellence (CSCE) in the UAE are designed to bridge this gap. We are providing clinical training and technical support sessions on BD products and services, hands-on training that goes beyond product operation, focusing on data literacy, system integration, and advanced analytics – the very skills needed to maximize the benefit of platforms like BD Incada™. Meanwhile, our global BD Learning Academy digital platform continues to expand with clinical programmes covering medication management, infusion safety and advanced patient monitoring. Our goal is to empower healthcare professionals to be clinical innovators, not just end-users, ensuring that the technology is expertly leveraged for patient benefit.

Collaboration with regulators and government entities is becoming crucial, especially as institutions prepare for the inevitable scaling of AI in healthcare. How is BD supporting the creation of policies that foster innovation while safeguarding patient privacy and trust?

Regulators today face the dual responsibility of enabling innovation and ensuring that patient safety and trust remain uncompromised. At BD, we see ourselves as a partner in shaping balanced, future-ready frameworks. To achieve this, we engage closely with ministries, regulatory bodies, standard-setting organizations, and academic institutions to share our expertise in device safety, interoperability, data stewardship, and AI governance. In Saudi Arabia, we are collaborating with entities like the Saudi Patient Safety Center to help advance national standards, drive research and maintain public trust in the evolving healthcare landscape.

Our goal is to support the development of regulations that encourage responsible data use without slowing digital transformation. With platforms like BD Incada™, we prioritise cybersecurity, transparency and compliance with global standards. This reassures health systems that as they scale digital capabilities, patient privacy and clinical integrity are fully protected. We are also contributing to discussions on connectivity standards, home-hospital models, and data-enabled clinical innovation. We firmly believe that regulation accelerates progress and we are committed to helping build a regulatory environment where technology, patients, and clinicians all benefit.

Something interesting that was mentioned recently is your ambition to partner on home-based care and home hospital initiatives. How do the current Connected Care solutions translate to these rapidly growing, non-traditional care settings?

The shift to home-based care is an irreversible trend, and the central challenge is maintaining the clinical rigor of a hospital while decentralizing services into the home. BD Incada™ uses interactive dashboards to empower front-line teams to quickly spot and resolve issues and offers on-demand insights through conversational AI, clinician-driven dashboards, and enterprise-wide visibility to support smarter, faster decisions. By integrating data from compatible devices, BD Incada™ can provide clinicians with reliable insights, regardless of where care is delivered.

Where do you see the greatest disruptive opportunity for the Connected Care segment in the GCC market, and what is BD doing today to capture it?

I would say that the greatest disruptive opportunity for the Connected Care segment lies in leveraging data from connected devices to move beyond mere error reduction toward proactive patient risk mitigation.

We aim to leverage the vast data streams from our three million smart connected BD devices globally, applying machine learning to build sophisticated algorithms that can help reduce medication errors, We are investing heavily in our data science capabilities and building the BD Incada™ Platform as the future-proof backbone for this. The GCC, with its ambitious investment and centralized healthcare data initiatives, is positioning itself to become a leading region for testing and implementing AI-driven clinical models.

Looking ahead, BD will be participating in the World Health Expo 2026 in Dubai. What will you be showcasing during the event?

The World Health Expo is a significant event for the global health sector, and our continued participation reaffirms our dedication to the GCC market. At WHX 2026, we will showcase the latest innovations from our Connected Care segment. We will spotlight BD Advanced Patient Monitoring (APM), featuring VitaWave™ Cuff plus system, which highlights the importance of non-invasive continuous hemodynamic monitoring. Access accurate, continuous, non-invasive blood pressure monitoring wherever a compatible patient monitor is available with the VitaWave Plus™ System.

The HemoSphere AltaTM Monitor is designed with smart, predictive algorithms to support informed, proactive clinical decision-making, allowing monitoring of pressures, cardiac outputs, flow, and tissue oxygenation simultaneously from both left and right heart for comprehensive insights in complex patients.  Beyond APM, we will showcase our innovative BD Medication Management Solutions (MMS), including the BD Incada™ Connected Care Platform, the next-generation BD Pyxis™ Pro Automated Medication Dispensing Solution, and the BD Rowa pharmacy storage and dispensing automation solutions.

With BD Incada™ we plan to unify data across millions of connected BD devices to provide clinical and pharmacy teams with enterprise-wide visibility, AI-powered insights, and enhanced security features for controlled substance management. Analytics in BD Incada™ is designed to help reduce manual efforts involved in compiling and interpreting multiple reports and uses interactive dashboards to empower front-line teams to quickly spot and resolve issues.

Ultimately, our showcase will illustrate how these sophisticated, intelligent solutions simplify clinical workflows, allow healthcare staff to spend more time with patients, and accelerate the GCC’s move toward digitally connected, sustainable care systems.