Global Health Exhibition… Riyadh Brings the World Together The Global Health Exhibition in Riyadh stands out as a landmark event, bringing together more than 160,000 professionals, 1,000 investors, and 500 international organizations from 20 countries. It serves as a strategic hub for shaping the next generation of healthcare, and a stage for showcasing cutting-edge advances in medical devices, digital health, laboratory science, and smart hospital systems. | “People First”: Remarks by the Secretary-General In the opening session on Tuesday, October 28, Dr. Aws Alshamsan, Secretary-General of the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties, delivered remarks built around a single, deliberate message: people come before technology. Health systems, he said, are not sustained by equipment alone, but by minds, skills, and compassion. Every act of teaching inside a hospital, he noted, is a heartbeat of real care. Dr. Alshamsan went on to describe a stark imbalance in how the world funds healthcare. Globally, about 10 trillion dollars are spent each year on health, yet less than 3 percent of that is directed toward education and professional development. This comes at a moment when the world is facing a projected shortfall in its health workforce. Closing that gap, he argued, is not only a moral imperative — it is also an economic opportunity. Addressing the shortage could unlock an estimated 1.1 trillion dollars in value and prevent millions of avoidable deaths. Solving the problem, he said, starts with reframing how we think about training. Health education can no longer be treated as a cost on the balance sheet; it has to be recognized as an investment. He offered a practical benchmark: dedicating just 1 percent of total health spending to workforce development could train and upskill 50 million practitioners over the next decade. That alone would begin to narrow the global workforce gap. His argument is consistent with the World Health Organization’s view. The challenge, according to WHO, is not just about headcount. It is also about chronic underinvestment in education and training — and about health systems that struggle to absorb graduates or direct them to areas of real clinical need. For Dr. Alshamsan, the future of healthcare rests on changing the culture of practice itself. Every health professional should be both a learner and an educator. Hospitals should function as living training environments — places where empathy is taught with the same seriousness as pharmacology or anatomy. In that model, the most meaningful investment is in people. That vision requires moving beyond bureaucratic, lecture-driven models of continuing education. Instead, it calls for embedding learning directly into day-to-day clinical work. The approach begins with honest dialogue with practitioners and a precise assessment of their real needs — not generic checklists. From there, it builds flexible, interactive programs that respect differences in experience and workload. Training takes place within the work setting, as part of the clinical day, not as a detached exercise. And it is continually refined through direct feedback and measured improvement in performance. In essence, he argued for a system that doesn’t just acquire new machines, but continuously develops the people who stand behind them. | | | Health Workforce Mapping and Sustainable Mobility The first panel discussion focused on the future of sustainable mobility for the health workforce, and the need to standardize recognition of professional qualifications across countries. The session was moderated by Dina Alismail from the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties and featured international speakers representing major regulatory and academic bodies, including the World Federation for Medical Education, the Medical Council of Canada, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and the International Association of Medical Regulatory Authorities, alongside experts in health accreditation. | | | The discussion aligns with one of the most ambitious agendas ever advanced by the World Health Organization: the Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030. The vision is straightforward and unapologetic — to build health systems that can withstand crisis by investing in people first. That priority is rooted in a long-standing structural problem. Several years ago, a review published in the journal Human Resources for Health found that while progress had been made, the world was still far from where it needed to be. When the strategy was first launched in 2016, global forecasts warned of a projected shortfall of 18 million health workers by 2030, most of them in low- and middle-income countries. Five years into implementation, the updated review showed some movement: the projected gap narrowed to around 11 million. That is a meaningful achievement — but it did not erase the imbalance. Some countries managed to recruit, train, and retain more clinicians. Others, especially in regions such as Africa and South Asia, continue to face severe shortages of doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals. Meanwhile, wealthier countries are concentrating an outsized share of global health talent. That reality poses a direct threat to the principle of health equity. Within this context, “sustainable mobility” is emerging as a necessary model for how health workers move across borders. It does not mean uncontrolled migration or one-way extraction of talent from poorer countries. It means professionally organized, legally regulated, and balanced mobility that benefits all sides: the practitioner, the country of origin, and the destination country. | | | Equipping the Health Workforce for Biotechnology The second session turned to an equally urgent question: is the health workforce ready to operate in a biotechnology-driven future? The discussion brought together senior academic figures and pharmaceutical industry leaders, alongside Dr. Ahmed Al-Shamrani, CEO of the National Center for Health Workforce Planning. The session was moderated by Dr. Abdullah Alshememry, faculty member at King Saud University. The core focus was straightforward: how do we equip today’s clinician with the knowledge and technical skill set needed to work safely and confidently with biotechnology? Over the past two decades, biotechnology has quietly redrawn the map of modern medicine — from cancer diagnostics, to predicting rare diseases, to enabling entirely new classes of therapy. And yet, fluency in this new language — the language of genomics and advanced biologics — remains limited among working clinicians worldwide. | | | Consider one practical example: the recent approval by the Saudi Food and Drug Authority of lecanemab for Alzheimer’s disease, a biologically engineered therapy. Approval of a drug like this is not just a regulatory milestone; it forces operational change inside the hospital. It triggers multidisciplinary workshops among neurologists, clinical pharmacists, nurses, radiologists, and laboratory specialists. Teams must review eligibility criteria for patients, imaging requirements such as MRI protocols, infusion schedules, long-term monitoring plans, patient counseling materials, and pharmacovigilance checklists. In other words, biotechnology does not arrive as a headline — it arrives as readiness. And readiness demands structured training for the workforce, tailored to each product and each modality. In Saudi Arabia, that pressure is accelerating. Under the National Biotechnology Strategy — a priority track within Vision 2030 — biotechnology is no longer a niche. It is a national capability. That shift means frontline practitioners will increasingly face advanced molecular tests, cell and gene therapies, and tighter regulatory requirements inside their daily practice. | | | Recent reviews, including work published in 2024, point to a clear skills gap between what students (and even working clinicians) are being taught and what the healthcare system actually needs. Many university programs still focus on basic molecular content — DNA, enzymes, core genetics — while real-world practice now demands something far more applied: genomic data analysis, bioinformatics literacy, automated experimental design, foundational “biological AI,” and safe handling of biologically manufactured therapies. The same findings highlight a global imbalance. Some countries have begun rolling out structured, advanced training for physicians and other health professionals in these domains. Others still have almost no pathway at all. The result is an emerging divide in who can deliver precision medicine and who cannot — a divide that will directly shape clinical outcomes and public expectations. | | | In response, experts are calling for the creation of a unified global framework for genomics and biotechnology education. The logic is simple: empowering the health workforce to work with biotechnology is no longer an academic luxury. It is now a professional obligation and a strategic requirement that touches every layer of the system, in Saudi Arabia and beyond. With whole-genome sequencing moving into mainstream diagnostics, with cell and gene therapies crossing from trial settings into routine care, and with molecular surveillance becoming part of outbreak response, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and laboratory scientists all need to operate inside a new ecosystem of tools, standards, and regulatory procedures. That includes not just how to interpret a complex molecular report, but how to act on it ethically, safely, and in compliance with data governance. | | | The impact is not limited to patient outcomes. It also directly affects workforce safety and system resilience. Handling biologic products, maintaining cold-chain integrity, and meeting pharmacovigilance requirements demand strict protocols and repeated, hands-on training. This approach has immediate operational consequences. The more capable a practitioner becomes at selecting the right molecular test, interpreting it accurately, and applying it in treatment decisions, the more precise the diagnosis. That, in turn, lowers the rate of unnecessary tests, reduces inappropriate therapies, speeds escalation when needed, and improves patient indicators across the board. As Saudi Arabia advances toward its Vision 2030 goals, one theme keeps surfacing: the true investment is in people, not hardware. Building a health system that can adapt, learn, and endure will depend less on acquiring the newest device and more on developing the professionals who stand behind that device. The human being remains the center of medicine — and the most reliable bet on its future. | | |
