Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of the UAE, and Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai, has approved a package of new government strategies and projects worth Dhs18bn aimed at strengthening the emirate’s infrastructure, cultural sector, investment climate and public services.

The initiatives, approved during a meeting of Dubai’s Executive Council, span culture, transport, trade, Emiratisation, urban planning, digital governance and Islamic finance as the emirate pursues its long-term D33 economic agenda.

Among the largest projects is the First Al Khail Street Development Plan, which will create a 15-km elevated corridor running parallel to Sheikh Zayed Road.

Construction is scheduled to begin in Q3 2027 and conclude by Q4 2030.

The project is expected to serve 2.6 million residents, improve access to areas including Al Barsha, Al Quoz, Business Bay and Meydan, reduce peak-hour travel times on Sheikh Zayed Road by 51 per cent and increase road capacity by around 9,000 vehicles per hour.

The Executive Council also approved the Dubai Cultural Strategy 2033, which seeks to increase the cultural sector’s contribution to the emirate’s gross domestic product to 5.4 per cent while attracting more than 6,000 international creatives and supporting over 6,000 local talents.

The strategy includes 40 initiatives covering cultural innovation, heritage preservation and talent development, and aims to expand Dubai’s cultural assets by more than 200 per cent.

In support of its ambition to become a global investment hub, Dubai approved the launch of a unified Investor Register, allowing businesses and investors to operate across multiple free zones and mainland jurisdictions without repeated registration procedures.

The register is intended to simplify investment processes and support the Dubai Economic Agenda D33, which targets Dhs650bn in foreign direct investment by 2033.

Dubai Population Now initiative

Dubai also approved the “Dubai Population Now” initiative, a real-time population monitoring system powered by artificial intelligence that will provide live demographic data to support planning across housing, healthcare, education and transport.

Dubai’s population reached 4.58 million by the end of 2025, an increase of 332,000, or 7.5 per cent, from the previous year, according to government data.

Other measures include an Emirati Talents Strategy for private education, targeting the employment of 3,000 UAE nationals in the sector by 2033, and a new visual identity for Dubai’s address system, which will be rolled out across 186 areas by 2029.

The Executive Council also approved the establishment of the Global Centre for Technology and Innovation in Islamic Finance, to be managed by Dubai International Financial Centre in partnership with global organisations.

The centre aims to strengthen Dubai’s position in Islamic financial technology through research, innovation programmes and talent development as the global Islamic finance industry continues to expand.

Sheikh Hamdan said the initiatives reflected Dubai’s commitment to planning for future growth while enhancing quality of life and reinforcing its position as a global centre for business, culture and innovation.

Read: Dubai’s Crown Prince calls for stronger economic resilience amid global shifts

US digital sports platform Fanatics has entered the UAE’s regulated commercial gaming market through a joint venture with Momentum Group after the country’s gaming regulator approved a change in control of Momentum’s licensed entities, the companies said on Thursday.

Under the agreement, Momentum’s existing UAE commercial gaming licences and operations will become part of the joint venture, combining the local company’s regional operations with Fanatics’ sportsbook, iGaming and technology capabilities.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The joint venture will operate and expand the commercial gaming activities currently licensed to Momentum in the UAE, including iGaming, sportsbook and gaming-related content websites.

The UAE’s General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA) approved the change in control of Momentum’s existing licensed entities, a requirement under the country’s regulatory framework for commercial gaming.

The deal marks Fanatics’ entry into the UAE commercial gaming market. The company currently operates licensed sportsbook and iGaming businesses across multiple US states.

“The UAE has built one of the world’s most carefully regulated commercial gaming markets, and this joint venture is a reflection of the confidence that brings,” Scott Burton, chief operating officer of Momentum Group, said in a statement.

Conor Grant, president of Fanatics Gaming, said the company was making a long-term commitment to the UAE market.

“We are entering this market for the long term, committed to building something genuinely category-defining together,” Grant said.

The companies said they plan to invest in technology, product development and customer experience, while advancing responsible gaming and player protection in line with the GCGRA’s regulatory framework.

The partnership will also seek to expand access to regulated gaming products in the UAE and contribute to the country’s digital economy, the companies said.

The UAE established the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority in 2023 to oversee and regulate commercial gaming activities, as the country develops a regulated gaming sector.

Medcare Hospitals and Medical Centres, the premium healthcare provider under Aster DM Healthcare Group, has signed a strategic partnership with InterSystems to implement InterSystems IntelliCare, becoming the first healthcare provider in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) to adopt a next-generation, native AI-first electronic health record (EHR) platform.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Alisha Moopen, MD and group CEO of Aster DM Healthcare, and Ali Abi Raad, MD, InterSystems Middle East, India and South Africa, in the presence of senior officials from both organisations.

Read more-Aster DM Healthcare unveils women’s health platform across UAE hospitals, clinics

The implementation marks a significant milestone in Medcare’s digital transformation strategy, reinforcing its commitment to leveraging advanced technologies to improve clinical outcomes, operational efficiency and patient-centred care.

Unlike conventional EHR platforms that integrate artificial intelligence as an additional feature, InterSystems IntelliCare has been designed with AI embedded at its core. The platform unifies clinical workflows while supporting interoperability across hospitals, clinics, laboratories and insurers. It is also designed to reduce administrative workloads, allowing physicians to dedicate more time to patient care.

AI to enhance clinical efficiency and patient care

Commenting on the announcement, Alisha Moopen, MD and group CEO of Aster DM Healthcare, said: “We have always believed in equipping our doctors and healthcare professionals with the most advanced technologies and transformative solutions that enable them to put our patients first and ensure the best outcomes for every individual who seeks care with us. With Medcare becoming the first healthcare provider in the UAE to implement a next-generation, AI-first electronic health record platform, we are taking a bold step towards redefining how care is delivered.

“As the future of healthcare lies in intelligent systems that augment human expertise rather than simply digitise existing processes, we are confident that IntelliCare will empower our physicians and caregivers with advanced tools that reduce administrative burden, unlock meaningful insights, and enable more time to be dedicated to what matters most, our patients.”

The platform will streamline access to patient information, automate clinical documentation and enable clinicians to retrieve patient histories through AI-powered information retrieval and natural language interaction. Future releases will introduce agentic AI capabilities designed to support clinical decision-making and workflow management while maintaining human oversight.

Ali Abi Raad, MD, InterSystems Middle East, India and South Africa, said: “Today’s milestone builds on a long-standing partnership, with Medcare trusting InterSystems as an innovation ally since 2020. Transitioning to InterSystems IntelliCare is the natural, innovation-driven progression of Medcare’s mature TrakCare footprint. This milestone also marks a pivotal moment as the broader Aster DM Healthcare relationship expands beyond the UAE market.”

Supporting Medcare’s long-term innovation strategy

For patients, the platform is expected to deliver more personalised and efficient healthcare by enabling physicians to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time interacting directly with patients. A unified patient record is also expected to improve continuity of care, support more informed treatment decisions and reduce duplication across the healthcare journey.

Dr Shanila Laiju, group CEO of Medcare Hospitals and Medical Centres, said: “Artificial intelligence is reshaping healthcare globally, and Medcare is committed to ensuring our patients and physicians benefit from the very latest advancements.

“While many healthcare providers have successfully integrated AI into specific aspects of their operations, IntelliCare represents a fundamentally different approach. As the first healthcare provider in the UAE to adopt an AI-first EHR platform, we are embedding intelligence directly into the clinical ecosystem. This allows our physicians to access insights faster, streamline workflows, and spend more time engaging with patients, ultimately enhancing both clinical care and the overall patient experience.”

Since its launch in 2025, IntelliCare has been deployed at Indonesia’s EMC Healthcare, where it supports operations across eight hospitals, and has also become the first unified AI EHR platform to receive the EU Class IIa Medical Device Regulation (MDR) certification for clinical safety.

Inception42 has launched Seraj, a new enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) model developed with Microsoft to strengthen Arabic-language capabilities for government and enterprise applications across the region.

Available through Compass, Core42’s sovereign AI platform, Seraj is built on OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 model and has been enhanced with advanced Arabic language understanding, cultural awareness and enterprise-specific capabilities while maintaining multilingual performance.

The model has been designed to address a long-standing challenge facing organisations across the Middle East, where frontier AI systems have typically delivered stronger performance in English than in Arabic, limiting their effectiveness in sectors requiring linguistic precision, dialect recognition and cultural context.

Rather than building a new Arabic-first model from scratch, Inception42 applied targeted mid-training techniques using curated Arabic datasets covering linguistics, cultural knowledge, safety scenarios and domain-specific enterprise content. The company said this approach significantly improves Arabic performance while preserving GPT-4.1’s reasoning and multilingual capabilities.

Seraj supports a range of enterprise use cases, including document analysis, summarisation, translation, question answering, workflow automation, bilingual Arabic-English applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and knowledge-intensive tasks across sectors such as government, education, legal services, Islamic studies, media and financial services.

Ashish Koshy, CEO of Inception42, said: “Seraj is a gamechanger. Organisations across the region have been forced to choose between global AI capability and meaningful Arabic performance. Seraj changes that equation. From government services and legal analysis to customer engagement and knowledge management, the model is designed to help organisations deploy Arabic AI at scale with confidence.”

Rima Semaan, director of AI and enterprise solutions at Microsoft UAE, said: “Microsoft’s collaboration with Inception42 on Seraj reflects a shared commitment to expanding the real-world impact of AI across the region. AI will create the greatest impact when it can understand and engage people in the languages they use every day. Seraj represents an important step forward in making advanced AI more relevant, accessible, and effective for Arabic-speaking organisations.”

She added that combining frontier AI capabilities with regional linguistic and cultural intelligence supports the UAE’s broader ambitions to accelerate responsible AI adoption across governments, enterprises and critical industries.

The launch reflects growing demand across the Middle East for AI systems capable of operating effectively in Arabic across complex enterprise environments where accuracy, trust and contextual understanding are critical.

Aster DM Healthcare has announced the launch of a comprehensive, group-wide women’s health programme aimed at redefining how women in the UAE access healthcare across every stage of life. The initiative reflects a strategic shift towards integrated, lifecycle-based care delivery across the Group’s hospital and clinic networks.

The programme introduces a unified clinical and operational framework under two distinct but aligned brand expressions: “Care for Her” by Aster Hospitals and Clinics and “Elle by Medcare,” a premium offering delivered through Medcare Hospitals & Medical Centres in the UAE. Together, these initiatives are positioned as one of the region’s most structured, life-stage–oriented women’s healthcare models, combining prevention, early detection, specialist intervention, and long-term wellness management within a coordinated system of care.

Designed to span adolescence through menopause and beyond, the programme seeks to address longstanding gaps in continuity and accessibility within women’s healthcare by embedding structured pathways across physical, hormonal, emotional, and metabolic health needs.

A unified vision for lifecycle-based women’s health

At the core of the initiative is a unified clinical philosophy that places women’s health within a continuum of care rather than isolated treatment episodes. The model integrates preventive screening, early intervention, specialist consultations, and long-term wellness tracking into a single structured framework.

Speaking on the initiative, Alisha Moopen, MD and group CEO, Aster DM Healthcare, said, “In today’s fast paced world where families are often far apart and people are juggling multiple priorities, young girls or women do not often find the right guidance that can support them aptly through their individual health needs, often experiencing delay in seeking the right care. At Aster, with our vast experience of supporting women’s health across different businesses, it was possible for us to connect the dots and create a network which can support a woman in UAE through all stages of life. Be it aiding a mother in guiding her young daughter through adolescence or a young mother grappling with pregnancy or a woman coping with menopause, the Women’s Health Programme across Aster and Medcare brings a unified network of doctors and experts who are working together to provide the complete circle of care.”

She further added, “Women are natural decision-makers. They plan, lead, organise and adapt. Caring for their health is not separate from that strength, it is an extension of it. This programme is about clarity, awareness and confidence. It is about helping women understand their bodies better, anticipate their needs, take informed decisions for their future and support other women in their lives more effectively. It is an unique pathway which doesn’t currently exist in UAE and we are proud to be the pioneers to bring this to life.”

Structured clinical pathways across life stages

The programme is built around a clearly defined, age-based care model that categorises women’s health into four primary life stages: Teens and Twenties, Young Women, Perimenopause, and Menopause. Each stage is supported through dedicated clinical pathways designed to reflect evolving health requirements over time.

These pathways include preventive screenings, multidisciplinary consultations, and personalised care plans addressing hormonal balance, reproductive health, mental wellness, thyroid function, metabolic health, and sexual health. The initiative also incorporates services such as hormone replacement therapy (HRT), alongside structured counselling support for emotional and psychological wellbeing.

By integrating multiple specialties within a single care journey, the programme aims to ensure that patients receive coordinated and continuous medical oversight, reducing fragmentation in diagnosis and treatment.

Network-wide implementation across UAE facilities

“Care for Her” by Aster Hospitals and Clinics is being implemented across a wide network of healthcare facilities, including Aster Hospital, Al Mankhool; Aster Hospital, Al Qusais; and multiple Aster Clinics located in Bur Dubai, Muteena, Discovery Gardens, Arabian Ranches, Al Qusais, and Al Khail.

The programme is structured as a 360-degree wellness journey, combining age-specific health pathways with coordinated multi-specialty referrals. It is designed to provide continuity from initial consultation through diagnostics, treatment, follow-up care, and long-term health tracking.

Dedicated care coordinators and clinical teams will oversee patient journeys, ensuring a seamless experience across departments and specialties. The model places emphasis on operational integration, with the objective of improving both clinical outcomes and patient engagement.

In parallel, “Elle by Medcare” serves as the premium counterpart within the group’s ecosystem, offering a more personalised and concierge-style healthcare experience. It is being rolled out across Medcare Royal Speciality Hospital, Medcare Women and Children Hospital, Medcare Hospital Sharjah, Medcare Sheikh Saqr Al Qasimi Hospital, and select Medcare Medical Centres.

The programme begins with a gynaecology-led consultation and extends into tailored referral pathways involving endocrinology, internal medicine, cardiology, dermatology, mental health, and other specialties. It is supported by advanced diagnostics and individually designed wellness plans, aimed at delivering higher levels of personalisation while maintaining clinical depth and continuity.

Dedicated clinics for underserved life stages

As part of the initiative, Aster DM Healthcare will introduce dedicated Adolescence and Menopause Clinics, targeting two critical yet often underserved phases of women’s health.

These clinics are intended to provide structured environments for early intervention, health education, and long-term planning. They are also designed to encourage proactive engagement with healthcare systems from a younger age, while supporting women through complex physiological transitions later in life.

The initiative reflects an effort to bridge gaps in awareness and access, particularly in areas where preventive care and structured guidance have traditionally been limited.

Community engagement and preventive health focus

Beyond clinical services, both “Care for Her” and “Elle by Medcare” will incorporate extensive community outreach programmes. These include health awareness campaigns, educational workshops, school-based initiatives, and corporate wellness engagements across the UAE.

The programmes are designed to create safe and accessible platforms where women can openly discuss health concerns, improve health literacy, and receive timely preventive care guidance.

A particular emphasis is being placed on adolescent health education through school outreach initiatives. These programmes aim to encourage early awareness of healthy lifestyle practices, reproductive health education, and long-term wellbeing planning.

At its core, the initiative reflects Aster DM Healthcare’s positioning of women’s health as a continuous journey rather than a series of isolated medical events. By combining clinical excellence with structured care pathways, preventive strategies, and personalised engagement models, the group is seeking to address a significant structural gap in women’s healthcare delivery.

The launch of “Care for Her” and “Elle by Medcare” signals a broader strategic emphasis on lifecycle-based healthcare models, with an integrated ecosystem designed to support women through every stage of life with greater consistency, accessibility, and clinical coordination.