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Executive Summary
- Building on the challenges highlighted in our previous blog, this blog explores the transformative opportunities in KSA’s chronic care landscape including AI-frontiers for care coordination, early detection, and patient management.
- Aligned with Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia’s $16B chronic care market is ripe for transformation. With strong momentum in digital health and AI, there is a bigger play for smarter diagnostics, streamlined care, and data-driven treatment.
- AI isn’t just an enabler—it’s the catalyst to close care gaps, improve outcomes, and scale sustainable chronic care solutions. Early innovators can secure a strong foothold in this rapidly growing market while delivering transformative care.
Opportunities for Innovation
Key opportunity zones where AI-driven solutions could transform Chronic care management in KSA include:
- Interconnected Suite for Patient Referral
Develop a unified digital referral platform that standardizes patient flow from primary to tertiary care. This solution can incorporate predictive AI algorithms to analyze referral patterns and optimize resource allocation, ensuring timely care while reducing overcrowding at tertiary facilities.
- Virtual/Chat-Based Consultation
Implement secure virtual consultation tools facilitating remote follow-ups and urgent access to care. By integrating agentic AI assistants, providers can offer round-the-clock triage and consultation —especially in cardiology, oncology, and nephrology—thus reducing appointment delays and improving patient engagement. The high proportion of patient no-shows (48%1) for in-person appointments highlights the criticality of a virtual consultation platform.
- AI-Based Drug Supply Chain Management Platform
Develop a system that leverages predictive AI to forecast drug demand and optimize procurement. By monitoring real-time inventory data and simulating various supply scenarios, the platform can minimize waste, prevent stockouts of essential drugs, and ensure a balanced medication supply across the healthcare system. With an average waste rate of 26%2 leading to $150M in economic loss—such a solution could deliver significant cost savings & strengthen supply chain resilience.
- Comprehensive Rehabilitation Programs
Establish integrated rehabilitation models that combine virtual, hybrid, and offline services with multidisciplinary support. AI-powered remote monitoring tools can track recovery metrics and customize rehabilitation plans, including smoking cessation, psychiatric support, and nutritional guidance for critical care. With a rehabilitation health workforce ratio of just 0.73 per 10,0003 people, such programs can help bridge access gaps, especially in rural areas.
Further, tailored AI solutions for individual chronic diseases underscore how targeted innovation can overcome specific care challenges:
Why Now?
The chronic care management market in KSA is at a tipping point—with significant challenges, strong market tailwinds, and policy momentum converging to make chronic care a compelling opportunity. The following key factors help explain this shift:
1) A Big and Growing Market
KSA’s chronic care market is large and expanding rapidly, valued at over $16B and serving more than 5M patients, with an average annual spend of $3,000 per patient annually. Nearly one-third of the country’s $57B7 healthcare budget is directed toward managing chronic diseases. Combined with an aging population and rising lifestyle-related risk factors, this signals a long-term, high-growth opportunity.
2) Massive Opportunity Across Diseases
Chronic care in KSA isn’t a monolith. Each major chronic disease area brings its own complexity and unmet need—creating a distinct space for tailored, tech-enabled models that can improve access, early detection, and continuity of care.
- Diabetes: Affects ~18%8 of the population and accounts for ~14% of all healthcare spending. KSA is projected to rank among the top 5 countries globally9 for Type 2 diabetes prevalence by 2030. With costs expected to rise 9x over the next 15 years, it highlights the need for more scalable and sustainable care models
- Cardiovascular Diseases: Causes 42%10 of all deaths in KSA, and events occur a decade earlier than in the West. Costs are expected to triple by 2035. This highlights urgency for early risk detection and better care continuity.
- Cancer: KSA’s leading cause of death, with treatment costs expected to rise 190% by 2050. Our discussions with experts highlight that low screening rates for diseases like breast cancer: ~8% in KSA vs 76% in US, further compounds this issue.
- Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD): Affects 5%11 of the population, but over 50% of cases are diabetes related. First-year transplant cost is ~$156K12, the highest in GCC.
- Chronic Brain Diseases: ~30K new cases per year and highest stroke mortality13 in the GCC, driven by comorbid diabetes and hypertension. With long rehab pathways and few support systems, this is an open opportunity for post-acute care innovation.
3) Strong Stakeholder Alignment
Momentum across the ecosystem is building. The government is actively investing in digital health transformation while private players, insurance companies, and diagnostic firms are investing in specialized AI-driven care and telehealth infra. This coordination offers a uniquely supportive environment for startups to scale. Below is a snapshot of key initiatives driving this shift:
4) An Open Market for Innovation
Despite the scale and urgency of the problem, startup activity in chronic care remains limited. Few companies are tackling these complex challenges, and even fewer are building AI-native platforms tailored to the KSA’s care models. For founders, this is a rare chance to enter a high-need, high-growth, and wide open space with ample room to define category leadership. Below is an non-exhaustive list of startups operating in this space in KSA:
Taken together, these tailwinds create a clear signal: chronic care in KSA has urgent needs, a ready market, and a system that is open to innovation. Founders who move early, build locally, and solve deeply stand to shape the future of chronic care delivery in the Kingdom.
Inherent Risks
While AI-driven solutions present significant opportunities in chronic care management, inherent risks persist.
- Integration with Healthcare Infrastructure – Many healthcare providers still rely on legacy systems, making seamless integration with hospitals, insurers, and government platforms a challenge, potentially slowing adoption rates.
- AI Model Accuracy & Bias – AI algorithms tailored to the regional Arabic language are still in development, as there is a lack of sufficient digitized data from healthcare players to support effective data modeling. This could lead to patient safety concerns and lack of trust in the short to mid-term.
- Patient Adoption & Engagement – Encouraging long-term patient adherence to AI-driven chronic care solutions would be difficult due to cultural preferences, digital literacy gaps, and trust in traditional healthcare models.
- Regulatory and Compliance Challenges - AI-led healthcare platforms and Software as a Medical Devices would have to meet regulatory requirements from SFDA and follow global standards like ISO 13485 and IEC 62304. Without clear regulatory frameworks, AI adoption would face delays, restricting its overall impact.
Conclusion
As the chronic care management landscape in KSA evolves, driven by the growing prevalence of chronic diseases and fragmented provider-patient engagement across various stages of care, there is a significant opportunity for founders to leverage AI to address these challenges. The market is ripe for innovative solutions that can enhance early detection, improve care coordination, and empower patients in managing their conditions.
If you're a founder who recognizes both the urgency of the situation and the untapped potential in this space, we want to connect with you. Let's harness the power of AI to create scalable solutions and make a lasting impact in chronic care in KSA.
References
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11442709/#Sec2
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7364235/
- https://www.emro.who.int/emhj-volume-30-2024/volume-30
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11772728/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10434818/
- https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00380-7/fulltext
- https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/sa/pdf/2024/11/saudi-arabia-budget
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9913913/#:~:text
- https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/clinical-diabetes-and-healthcare/articles
- https://shc.gov.sa/Arabic/NewNHC/Activities/Documents/Cardiovascular%20disease
- https://bmcnephrol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12882-025-03954-2
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11010631/
- https://nsj.org.sa/content/30/1/49#:~:text=The%20KSA%20also%20exhibits.
- https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/saudi-arabia-healthcare
- https://mcit.gov.sa/sites/default/files/2025-01/DeepTech2025%20-%20VF_0.pdf
- https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/02/07/3022690/28124/en/Analysis
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