M42 leading AI revolution in healthcare

ABU DHABI, 25th January, 2025 (WAM) — Artificial intelligence (AI) has entered into various fields and sectors across the globe, and healthcare is no exception. The technology has demonstrated strong potential to improve various aspects of care.

This includes supporting clinicians in non-clinical tasks, and improving decision-making using medical, genetic and behavioural data to enable the implementation of personalised evidence-based care for prevention and early diagnosis to reduce the disease burden and improve quality of life.

M42, a global health leader powered by AI and technology, stands out as one of the pioneering entities in the UAE. With its unique positioning, M42 is able to develop, test and deploy advanced AI solutions safely and effectively in real-world clinical settings working closely with clinicians, technologists and researchers., focusing on enhancing health in general, beyond just healthcare.

Ahead of the Arab Health 2025, Dr. Maaz Shaikh, Vice President of Product Management at M42 told the Emirates News Agency (WAM) that M42 has numerous AI-supported solutions and services. The most notable of which is “Med42 LLM Model,” a large language model designed for clinical use cases originally released in Oct 2023 and available for research use as an open-source solution. “Our latest version released this 2024 (Med42-v2) scored 94.5% on the USMLE testing in our evaluations. The availability of a reliable clinical large language model presents a significant leap in the meaningful use of technology in the healthcare sector,” he noted.

He added that M42 has developed and deployed multiple solutions for clinicians and staff that use Med42. “Clinicians across M42 can now harness the power of Generative AI and LLM using the Med42 Q&A application to summarise large volumes of information and data to make quick decisions, look up clinical guidelines and generate personalised evidence backed patient education and support materials to improve patient outcomes.”

“M42 is also deploying solutions to reduce the burden of administrative tasks on clinicians like clinical documentation and note taking so that clinicians can focus their attention and time on patient care improving patient experience and using technology to make better data driven decisions.”

He also pointed out M42‘s AIRIS-TB system, which conducts 2,000 chest X-ray examinations daily to screen for tuberculosis. AIRIS-TB’s AI capability enables M42 to automate screening for up to 80% of X-rays while improving the accuracy of reporting. “This is a major shift in screening capabilities for this disease, especially since traditional exams can only conduct 200 tests in the region. AI integration extends to endoscopic examinations, enhancing the accuracy of detecting anomalies and cancer indicators,” he said, adding, that the Omics Centre of Excellence at M42 is advancing genomic research, including the UAE Genome Programme, paving the way for the development of precision medicine and proactive health management across the UAE.

He confirmed that M42 adheres to all ethical and data privacy considerations from model development to application deployment and use while adopting AI technologies in the healthcare sector. “M42 has established a comprehensive framework to protect patient data, assess safety and clinical risks, and monitor the development process of solutions until their application, ensuring they comply with the highest ethical standards and achieve maximum benefit for patients without compromising any aspect of their privacy or data confidentiality.”

He added that today, many generative AI technologies such as large language models and AI-supported imaging and diagnostic techniques, have promising prospects in healthcare.

He emphasised that monitoring the safety and performance of AI solutions is crucial in healthcare, as these systems influence clinical decisions, posing an increasing risk of over-reliance on technology, which may lead to errors. “This is where our network of expert clinicians comes into play, to validate the accuracy of the systems’ work using clinical and expert discretion as healthcare specialists critically evaluate the AI-generated suggestions.”

Dr. Maaz explained that M42’s message from the UAE to the world revolves around enabling everyone to live longer, happier and healthier lives. “Therefore, the true measure of our success is not just increasing the length of life in terms of years but improving quality of health and wellbeing during those years. With M42’s ability to empower medical, genomic and advanced diagnostic capabilities with its AI technologies, it is well positioned to emerge as a leader in supporting the vision of “precision medicine and prevention for all” a reality through tech empowered healthcare system and workforce.”

He further mentioned that M42 values the responsible integration of AI capabilities with the human role. “While utilising technology to improve efficiency and access to services, M42 remains committed to maintaining the human touch in healthcare. Therefore, clinical care specialists will continue to play an active role in providing personalised and compassionate care to patients, especially in critical cases requiring long-term care.

“In fact, our focus with deploying AI in healthcare is about improving the quality and impact human touch in health so that every minute our clinicians and nurses spend with our patients is invested in improving patient experience and health outcomes instead of routine tasks,” Dr. Maaz Shaikh stated.

“Today, thanks to AI, we can extract vast amounts of data from patient records, lifestyle factors, and genetic information,” said Dr. Maaz. “This data can be used responsibly and ethically to predict an individual’s risk of developing certain diseases even before symptoms appear.”

“Therefore, M42 aims to continue leveraging these revolutionary technologies to drive drug discovery processes and accelerate clinical trials through advanced data analysis and pattern recognition.”

AI will play a critical role in healthcare, but it’s the human touch which will be the differentiator and core element of care. These technologies will play a crucial role in supporting healthcare professionals, fostering an integration of human expertise and skill with technological elements to provide an ecosystem that promises improved health outcomes for all members of society. It will establish proactive prevention, protecting against disease and enhancing health management across various conditions.