UAE Pushes AI in Health and Education While Stressing Cybersecurity Safeguards

AI Expansion and Government Support

The United Arab Emirates is broadening the use of artificial intelligence across key services as part of a national drive to advance the technology. Abu Dhabi’s government has launched a digital strategy for 2025 to 2027 that is backed by Dh13 billion, equivalent to about $3.54 billion. At the same time, the Ministry of Education has introduced an AI literacy framework that spans from kindergarten through Grade 12. In May, the UAE Cabinet gave approval to a national policy aimed at boosting digital health care and AI, which includes the development of medical systems and the training of health‑care workers to use these tools.

Risks and Expert Warnings

Experts caution that the growing reliance on AI in sectors such as health care and education brings heightened cybersecurity risks. Sensitive information like patient records, personal data and financial details could be exposed when shared with AI platforms such as ChatGPT or Claude. Nisha Sanghani, partner and head of Middle East at Ashurst Perkins Coie Risk Advisory, said the acceleration of AI adoption must be matched by substantial investment in cybersecurity and by training users to avoid breach risks. She added that safety, governance and accountability need to keep pace with innovation, especially when AI influences decisions about a person’s health, development or future. Sanghani also noted that the true measure of AI success in health and education is not speed of adoption but whether it delivers better outcomes that people can trust. She sees the UAE’s shift from experimental AI projects to everyday services as a chance to demonstrate responsible large‑scale use, urging organisations to move from asking where AI can be used to asking where it can genuinely improve outcomes and what conditions are needed to trust it.

Practical Applications and Governance

At Aster DM Healthcare, chief executive of digital health and e‑commerce Nalla Karunanithy explained that the organisation uses AI to read X‑rays alongside radiologists, to measure cardiac MRI scans and to support early detection of coronary artery disease. He said this saves clinicians time so that “the clinician’s time goes towards judgment,” while the AI detects, measures or flags and the clinician interprets, decides and signs. Karunanithy stressed that as AI spreads, health providers must control which systems can access medical information and what happens to it afterwards. Aster stores patient data in the UAE, evaluates each AI system before granting access, does not test with real patient data and only allows approved systems to receive necessary information. He quoted the group’s AI governance policy, which bars external providers from using patient information to train models or for any purpose beyond the approved scope.

NMC Healthcare is centralising information across its 70 centres, according to Ahmed Hafez, director of solution engineering for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Snowflake. He said the effort aims to improve understanding of hospital operations and to support decisions at the point of care.

Vladislav Tushkanov, research and development group manager at cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, speaking at the AI Everything summit in Abu Dhabi, said personal data must be kept safe. He stressed the need to educate the workforce so that staff know it is acceptable to use internal AI systems to process information but must not send personally identifiable information to the cloud.

Aster noted that it has rejected any solutions that fail to meet its data‑residency requirements and that staff must use only approved enterprise tools, overseen by the AI Centre of Excellence which handles assessment and adoption.

The article also mentions that last year hackers claimed responsibility for a large‑scale data breach at American Hospital in Dubai, reportedly seizing 450 million patient records; the hospital was contacted for comment but had not replied at the time of publication.

Despite these risks, Costi Perricos, Deloitte’s global generative AI leader, argued that organisations should not abandon AI simply because greater caution is required. He pointed out that the Middle East’s access to capital and technology, together with its willingness to pursue new ideas, creates opportunities to grow the AI sector. Perricos added that introducing tools is only one step; organisations also need to prepare employees for changes in how they perform their jobs.

Bikram Mukhi, chief strategy officer at Soika Labs, said human oversight remains essential, especially in education, noting that “we live in very interesting times where technology is moving faster than the rate of adoption.” He urged users to recognise that the technology is still evolving and that new capabilities could bring new risks, adding that governments and regulated businesses are also seeking tighter control over the information and infrastructure used by their AI systems.

Shadi Hatoum, regional manager for the Middle East and Africa at data platform company Tealium, concluded that AI cannot be deployed uniformly across the board, as different applications require distinct standards and measures of success.