The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH), the regulator of the healthcare sector in Abu Dhabi, today announced that it will establish an emirate-wide intelligent surgical network in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson.
The first-of-its-kind globally, the network builds on Abu Dhabi's sovereign, intelligent health infrastructure to scale responsible artificial intelligence across the emirate's operating rooms, improve patient outcomes, and support clinicians. The collaboration will establish Abu Dhabi as the anchor of a new global ecosystem to advance surgical AI across the world.
The initiative will deploy Johnson & Johnson’s Polyphonic open digital ecosystem, in collaboration with existing technology partners including Amazon Web Services (AWS), NVIDIA and Core42. It builds on Abu Dhabi’s integrated provider network to connect operating rooms in Abu Dhabi and aims to accelerate research, support responsible AI adoption, and create a model of care that is continuously improving.
Abu Dhabi’s intelligent surgical network will connect operating rooms across Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, PureHealth, Mediclinic Group, and NMC Healthcare, giving surgical teams access to advanced analytics and clinical insights at the point of care. This connected model is designed to improve precision, efficiency, training, and consistency of care, while accelerating shared learning, quality improvement, and continued innovation across the emirate and into a global surgical innovation environment.
Her Excellency Dr. Noura Khamis Al Ghaithi, Undersecretary of the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi, said: “Behind every operation is a surgeon making life changing decisions. Abu Dhabi has built one of the world’s most advanced intelligent health systems to enable innovation such as this, harnessing data, AI and shared intelligence to create impact at scale. Through our connected surgical network and collaboration with Johnson & Johnson, we are strengthening surgical care, enabling smarter clinical decisions, and ensuring every procedure can help to make the next safer and more precise. Abu Dhabi is not piloting AI in healthcare; we are operationalizing it across our system to deliver measurable impact for our community and beyond.”
The initiative brings together hospitals, government entities, academic institutions, research partners, and technology leaders under DoH’s single governance framework, where insights from before, during, and after every surgery are securely curated, structured, and feedback into the system to support the responsible development and validation of next-generation surgical AI.
Operating continuously and at scale, the ecosystem creates a continuous learning model that accelerates innovation, and enables the safer deployment of new tools for surgeons and patients.
The collaboration also establishes Abu Dhabi as the anchor of an open, interoperable surgical innovation environment designed to accelerate responsible AI development and clinical collaboration across the world.
Hani Abouhalka, Company Group Chair, Surgery, MedTech, Johnson & Johnson, said: “This groundbreaking collaboration with the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi demonstrates a shared ambition to accelerate the next-generation of AI solutions for surgery and drive innovation to meaningfully support surgeons and improve patient care globally.”
For patients, this has the potential to support more precise procedures, more consistent standards of care, and improved surgical experience. For clinicians, the program aims to deliver smarter tools, stronger decision support, and greater opportunities for continuous learning.
Abu Dhabi’s ecosystem-wide approach to healthcare transformation creates an environment where insights can be responsibly aggregated, validated and scaled across institutions more efficiently. This collaboration extends Abu Dhabi's broader vision to advance precision medicine, AI-enabled care, advanced therapeutics, and clinical research. Opening new pathways for global partners to develop and scale solutions that improve lives.
By combining agile regulation, AI-enabled digital infrastructure, world-class providers, and a leading life sciences ecosystem, Abu Dhabi offers a uniquely integrated environment where emerging healthcare technologies move efficiently from innovation to real-world implementation.
