Middlesex University (MDX) Dubai brought together leaders from healthcare, government, academia, and technology for the inaugural Digi-Health Lab Symposium, a one-day event held on September 10.

The symposium is part of the UAE’s growing push into digital healthcare.

In May, the Cabinet approved the National Policy for Advancing Digital Healthcare Services and Artificial Intelligence in the Healthcare Sector, part of the wider ‘We the UAE 2031’ agenda, which names predictive healthcare and health-tech innovation as national priorities.

The Digi-Health Lab has been created to study how emerging technology can address present and future healthcare challenges. It sits within Middlesex Dubai’s Centre of Excellence for Foresight and Emerging Technologies (CEFET).

Professor Fehmida Hussain, CEFET’s Deputy Director and Head of the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department, described the lab’s philosophy: “The future of healthcare will not be shaped by technology alone, but through collaboration between clinicians, researchers, government, industry, technologists, patients, and communities.”

Discussions at the event centered on responsible AI, wearable health technology, remote monitoring, and ambient listening.

Speakers in the event included Sandip Kumar (King’s College Hospital London Dubai), Dr. Narges Sheikhansari, Mariam Mubarak Alkarbi (UAE Ministry of Family), Dr Amber Rashid (King’s College Hospital London Dubai), Ahmad Awada (Mediclinic Middle East) and Professor Moustafa Nasralla (Prince Sultan University).

On a panel titled From Reactive Care to Prevention, Early Intervention & Personalized Healthcare, Dr Rashid from Kings College London, traced the shift from traditional snapshots of health data to continuous monitoring through wearables. “The stethoscope was invented 200 years ago to listen to the human body for the first time,” she said. “Now we have digital health, which tells you constantly, every heartbeat, every detail of your life, your sleep schedule, your glucose, every minute, 365 days a year. But just getting that data is not enough. Our job is to change that data into decisions, decisions that will make sure people don’t end up in the ICU.”

Dr Sheikhansari raised a longer-term concern: the systems being built today need to remain functional decades from now. She stressed reliable infrastructure and adaptability as prerequisites for any lasting digital health system.

Dr Ikram Rehman, Head of the Digi-Health Lab, spoke on both the promise and the limits of AI in this space. He commented on how AI, health data and remote monitoring can help catch risk earlier while flagging the challenges that come with deploying these tools responsibly.

The day ended with a showcase of student projects. Mega Glasses, an AI-powered wearable that helps visually impaired users, and AEGIS (Autonomous Elderly Guardian & Intelligent Sensing), which tracks elderly people’s safety using Wi-Fi signals and radar, without needing cameras or wearable devices.

Fresh graduate Maleesha Chamodi Kottage Rajapaksha presented SignBridge, an AI model that converts American Sign Language finger-spelling into text, aimed at reducing communication barriers for deaf and hard-of-hearing patients in emergency care.

For Rajapaksha, the symposium doubled as a chance to pitch her work to industry figures as she enters the job market.

“I’m a fresh graduate, and it’s very difficult for us to actually go into the job market, show our skills, and network with such high-level people, especially in the tech sector, which is very competitive,” she said. “To be able to do that here at the Digi-Health-Lab Symposium was amazing.”