Waleed Alshemimary

Director of Innovation

Waleed Alshemimary directs innovation at Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health, the body responsible for public healthcare across the Kingdom and for the Health Sector Transformation Programme under Vision 2030. He came to the post from Seha Virtual Hospital, the ministry's virtual care facility, where he was director of the innovation department; he was listed in that role in the Global Health Exhibition's Innovation Zone programme in 2023, where he judged startup pitches. Seha Virtual Hospital was launched by the ministry in February 2022 and now links 241 hospitals and more than 1,400 health centres across 114 primary and sub-specialties, and has been recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest virtual hospital in the world. Among the ministry's innovation instruments is the Health Innovation Sandbox, a controlled environment in which innovators, startups and developers test solutions in digital health, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, biotechnology and three-dimensional printing, with a supervising committee giving technical and regulatory advice; it has supported 342 solutions and graduated 25.