On January 23, the U.S.-Saudi Business Council organized a briefing in Riyadh with Dr. Ibrahim Alomar, Assistant Deputy Minister for Health Investment, Private Sector Participation (PSP) Program Leader at the Ministry of Health, and a group of experts from the PSP highlighting investment opportunities in Saudi Arabia’s healthcare transformation.
Over 80 U.S. and Saudi private sector companies, including Board Members of the Council, attended the event. Representing the tech, medical equipment, and hospitals fields, participants learned about business opportunities in extended care, medical cities, hospital program, laboratories, radiology, digital health, and others.
The Ministry of Health is undergoing a monumental transformation, according to Saudi Vision 2030, by focusing on its planning, regulatory, and supervisory roles in health care while deepening collaboration and integration between health and social care. The PSP mandate is to increase Private Sector Participation (contribution) to the healthcare sector from 25 percent to 35 percent by 2030.
More specifically, following global benchmarks, the current Hospital Based Modeling is changing towards a Person-centered Model that aims to focus on prevention ahead of treatment. The transformation is enabled by initiatives related to PSP, workforce, and digitalization and offers opportunities for business both in public-private partnership (PPP) projects as well as non-PPP projects.
PPP projects are related to Infrastructure, Operations, Facility Management, and Medical Equipment. Advisory services are sought after in Technical, Financial, Legal aspects. Initially approved initiatives are related to medical cities (hospitals, medical cities, primary care centers), extended care (long term care, rehabilitation, home care), radiology, and laboratories. A number of PPP projects are in various development phases ranging from business case, to RFP, and bid evaluation.
The PSP team also presented its strategy and five-year pipeline of projects related to primary health care centers, acute care, extended care, and digital, virtual care, renal care, air medical transport, to name just a few.
