Saudi Arabia Healthcare Transformation: Surfacing Regulatory Insights for a Pharma Client

Gaurav worked on an engagement where a GCC pharma client needed to understand the current status of managed entry agreements and health technology assessments in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The client was preparing for a wave of incoming government mandates and wanted to ensure they were ahead of the regulatory changes.

The team began with secondary research, mapping what was publicly available on the regulatory landscape. The secondary data proved outdated, and it became clear that primary interviews would be needed to get an accurate picture of where the market actually stood.

Gaurav ran a series of primary interviews with payers and healthcare representatives in Saudi Arabia. The interviews covered the latest regulatory developments, the status of government-led healthcare transformation programs, and what the client needed to prepare for.

One finding materially changed the client's understanding. The client had assumed there was no centralized database for healthcare records in Saudi Arabia. Through primary interviews, Gaurav's team found that a program called Nafees had been launched in 2024 and was already implemented across approximately seventy percent of private hospitals and ten to fifteen percent of public hospitals in the Kingdom. This was directly relevant to the client's planning as a pharma company operating in the market.

The final brief compiled the primary findings alongside the secondary research, presenting the most current picture of Saudi Arabia's healthcare transformation to the client's leadership. The client specifically appreciated the currency of the insights, which the secondary research alone could not have provided.