Dr Zain Kenderian, physician-entrepreneur and CEO, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute Abu Dhabi.
As healthcare rapidly embraces AI, precision diagnostics, and telemedicine, how do you see the UAE shaping the future of advanced vision care regionally and globally?
The UAE has a structural advantage that most countries don’t: the ability to make decisions quickly and implement them at scale. In vision care, that matters enormously. AI-driven retinal screening can detect diabetic eye disease years before symptoms appear. The technology exists. What’s often missing is the ecosystem to deploy it – the regulatory clarity, the institutional commitment, the infrastructure.
Abu Dhabi is building all three simultaneously. When you combine that with a patient population representing over 200 nationalities, you generate clinical data that no single-country system can match. That positions the UAE not just as a regional leader in vision care but as a genuine contributor to global ophthalmology research.
