Hady El Khoury

“Our goal is to address healthcare-specific challenges and nurture the next generation of healthcare leaders in the Middle East.”

Hospitals Magazine had the opportunity to sit with Mr. El Khoury to discuss the role of GE HealthCare in Saudi Arabia’s healthcare transformation. Read the full interview below:

How does GE HealthCare’s patient-first approach align with the Kingdom’s digital transformation strategy in healthcare?

Our patient-first approach fully aligns with Saudi Arabia’s focus on expanded access, improved care, greater efficiency in care delivery, and a greater focus on prevention and wellness. At GE HealthCare, we are focused on employing a holistic approach to care, addressing key challenges across every stage of the patient’s journey, by deploying our technologies and partnering with leading global institutions in the therapeutics landscape. Our collaboration with the public and private sectors in Saudi Arabia aims to re-design the model of care to improve individual access to best-in-class care. 

In Oncology, we target increased ease of screening and rapid diagnosis, where 75% of patients in our One Stop Breast^© clinics receive results in the same day, reducing the financial, clinical, and emotional burden on patients and providers alike. Our AI-powered digital solutions, like OncoCare^©, transform the medical oncologist’s experience in rapid decision making, by extracting all relevant patient data from different sources and visualizing it on one screen.    

Advanced Digital Health Solutions seem to be a significant focus for GE HealthCare. Can you elaborate on the company’s initiatives in this area, especially in collaboration with the Saudi Ministry of Health?

Health technology is crucial for the success of the Kingdom’s ambition to reduce dependency on hospital care and move toward preventive health services. Saudi Arabia aims to digitalize 70 percent of patient activities by 2030 and has allocated USD 1.5 billion for healthcare IT and digital transformation programs. In line with these goals, GE HealthCare is providing advanced digital transformation solutions. 

Our Command Center, operational in the Kingdom, is a prime example. It enables unprecedented orchestration of patient care in real-time through actionable information, digitizing the patient journey. 

With an increasing focus on personalized medicine, how is GE HealthCare contributing to this field in Saudi Arabia?

Advances in genomics and precision medicine are ushering in new opportunities for personalized healthcare globally. In the Kingdom, Saudi Vision 2030 has prioritized personalized and precision medicine.  GE HealthCare is supporting clinicians in Saudi Arabia who are increasingly moving away from a traditional “one size fits all” perspective towards individualized healthcare decisions for their patients. By incorporating AI technologies and advancing imaging equipment, we are helping to connect patient data throughout a provider’s digital ecosystem so that doctors can access it how and when they want and tailor diagnoses and treatments to the individual. Looking ahead, the use of positron emission tomography (PET), alongside new imaging tracers, targeted therapeutic pairings and sophisticated detection technology, is opening the possibility for advanced diagnoses and targeted treatments, important steps in delivering greater precision diagnostics and therapeutics. With the region’s personalized medicine market expected to reach USD 2.51 billion this year, our advanced imaging solutions will help empower clinicians to provide more precise therapies and personalized care. 

How does GE HealthCare’s highly localized service and support infrastructure contribute to the Kingdom’s healthcare goals?

By developing a large and robust service and support infrastructure in country, we provide our customers with the confidence that their equipment will be available when they and their patients need them. To achieve this, our dedicated service engineering team can tap local warehouses that stock 50% of all spare parts required. Through our advanced remote capabilities such as predictive monitoring, we are improving and upgrading system performance, and connecting to online monitoring for fast troubleshooting or repairs with a 30% remote fix rate. Ultimately, this helps our customers to become more operationally efficient while enhancing quality and reducing service-related costs. Further reinforcing this extensive localized infrastructure, GE HealthCare this year announced the launch of “Service Shop in Saudi Arabia,” an e-commerce portal to simplify the purchasing of spare parts for our systems. Registered portal users have 24×7 access to request spare parts and on-demand access to GE HealthCare repair services. The Service Shop is another example of how we are supporting the Kingdom’s digital transformation priorities in healthcare. 

How does GE HealthCare leverage its substantial local presence to proactively respond to the specific challenges faced by healthcare providers in Saudi Arabia? 

With more than 25,000 GE HealthCare assets deployed in hospitals, clinics and other facilities across Saudi Arabia, and with a team of nearly 250 people in the Kingdom, we are well positioned to serve customers and support the ongoing advancement of the healthcare sector. GE HealthCare’s strong local presence is a testament to its commitment to serving its customers and meeting their ever-evolving needs. By being close at hand, the company can better understand the unique challenges faced by healthcare providers and offer tailored solutions.

GE HealthCare’s imaging devices and diagnostic technologies have supported enhanced healthcare outcomes in the Kingdom. Can you discuss any recent collaborations in this domain?

A recent collaboration that stands out is our agreement with My Clinic, one of the largest outpatient providers in the Kingdom. We’re equipping their upcoming facility in Riyadh with a suite of advanced precision diagnostic and imaging solutions. This collaboration ensures that My Clinic will have access to our latest solutions, from MRI scanner imaging to Bone Densitometers that provide precise data on soft tissue and bone composition. This is just the latest in a decades-long commitment to delivering intelligent imaging devices and diagnostic technologies that support improved clinical decisions, better patient outcomes, and enhance workflow efficiency.

How is GE HealthCare supporting the healthcare priorities of Saudi Vision 2030?

Under Saudi Vision 2030, a new model of value-based care is emerging that emphasizes personalized healthcare solutions and the empowerment of clinicians and patients. In 2022, the Saudi Ministry of Health launched the Health Sector Transformation Program as part of Vision 2030. This program aims to restructure the healthcare sector, making it more comprehensive, effective, and integrated, with a sharp focus on patient health. At GE HealthCare, we are delivering efficient and reliable technologies that help the Ministry of Health and private sector providers address on these priorities. We are also working with the Ministry to develop disease care pathways to support these goals. These can include building early-intervention systems in primary care settings, creating one-stop centers for rapid diagnosis and treatment planning for specific diseases, and providing imaging equipment and training to help clinicians at all stages of the pathway.

Saudi Arabia has demonstrated its commitment to healthcare with the significant allocation of nearly SR190 billion to healthcare and social development in 2023. What implications does this have for the sector and for stakeholders such as GE HealthCare?

This allocation of SR190 billion (USD 50.4 billion) in 2023 is a testament to the government’s continued commitment to creating an efficient, integrated, and patient-centered ecosystem. This commitment is on par with the best healthcare systems globally. As Saudi Arabia lays the groundwork for a healthier and more sustainable future, providing access to healthcare at lower costs is becoming a reality for its people. GE HealthCare is honored to play an essential role in this transformation, offering our expertise and innovative solutions to address challenges and improve access to quality care.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) seem to be a significant aspect of Saudi Arabia’s healthcare transformation. How is GE HealthCare leveraging its position in these partnerships?

By putting in place the necessary legislations and regulations regarding PPPs – and doing so in consultation with local and international stakeholders who bring years of experience in implementing healthcare PPPs in other markets – the Kingdom is helping create the conditions to achieve its healthcare transformation goals. 

GE HealthCare brings global experience in implementing PPPs, as well as many of the elements crucial to success, including healthcare technologies, financing solutions and partners, consortium partner development, and project management. We have a regional and global track record of delivering complex projects on time and within budget. We have found that PPPs help governments looking to expand and improve care and build new facilities without the large upfront capital investment that this traditionally requires. As well, PPP models leverage private sector expertise to make it possible to treat more patients quickly, at a lower cost, and with improved health outcomes. 

How do GE HealthCare innovations in digital technologies address the unique healthcare challenges of the Middle East, Northeast Africa and Turkey (MENEAT) region?

This region is focused on delivering enhanced levels of care to more citizens, while reducing wait times and reducing per-patient costs, especially in the face of growing populations and rising levels of lifestyle diseases. By delivering a range of technologies – from the most advanced PET scanners to handheld ultrasound devices – and combining these with information management software and data solutions, GE HealthCare, is helping countries improve healthcare standards, clinical diagnosis, and patient outcomes. In key markets like Saudi Arabia, we’re expanding our range of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning systems to revamp hospital practices and accelerate diagnostics and treatment. Our AI tools in MRI, for instance, are helping radiation oncologists in therapy planning with a new ability to build synthetic CT images from MRI, which is supporting the emerging trend of MRI-only radiation therapy.

Nearly one year since it transitioned to a stand-alone company and with its regional management team focused on the Saudi market, what are GE HealthCare’s long-term growth plans and strategies for the Kingdom?

We have never been better positioned to support overall healthcare delivery in the Kingdom, especially in a market where USD 13.8 billion is forecast to be spent on new healthcare facilities by the end of the decade. 

For GE HealthCare, this has required an evaluation of the way we do business in Saudi Arabia that ensures we bring the best of our scale and operations to serve as a strategic partner to the Ministry of Health (MoH). 

We also are implementing next-generation hospital and digital solutions to support the delivery of Saudi Vision 2030. One change is that GE HealthCare will be leading the imaging portfolio directly in Saudi Arabia. This new approach will bring GE Healthcare even closer to our customers and reaffirms the company’s long-term commitment to supporting the development of the Kingdom’s healthcare sector in line with both Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program. We’ve already made significant steps towards improving accessibility and healthcare efficiencies throughout the country. With the new shifts that the company is taking in Saudi Arabia, and as part of our continued commitment to the Kingdom as a priority market of strategic importance, we are pleased to announce several additions to our Saudi leadership team.  This includes Mohammad El-Khoury, who has joined us as the Executive General Manager for GE HealthCare in the Kingdom, and Hisham Al Bahkali, who has been appointed Non-Executive Chairman of the Board of GE HealthCare in Saudi Arabia. Members of Mohammad’s team include Rayed Alghamdi, Vice President, Commercial and Healthcare Solutions, and Abdullah Alshamrani, Vice President, Government Affairs.

References:

1. Saudi Arabia Releases 2023 Budget Plan – USSBC (ussaudi.org)

2. 207.the_demographic_profile_of_saudi_arabia.pdf (arabdevelopmentportal.com)

3. Saudi Vision 2030: Kingdom prepares itself to become the next healthcare giant – Global Business Outlook

4. GCC: share of healthcare expenditures by country 2027 | Statista

5. Alpen Capital | Investment Banking Advisory