Abu Dhabi is strengthening evidence-based healthcare decision-making through its Health Technology Assessment (HTA) framework. In June 2025, the Abu Dhabi Department of Health (DoH) introduced HTA Guidelines providing a structured approach to evaluating pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics and other health technologies. The framework considers clinical effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, budget impact, disease burden, equity and ethical factors.

Within this framework, Real-World Evidence (RWE) derived from sources such as electronic health records, healthcare claims, biobanks and disease registries, can demonstrate how innovative healthcare technologies perform in routine clinical practice (safety & efficacy), as well as provide valuable input in regard to local epidemiology, demographics, treatment patterns and resource utilization.

For Abu Dhabi, RWE can help address uncertainties that remain following clinical trials. Trial populations and controlled study settings may not fully represent patients and treatment pathways encountered in everyday practice. Local RWE can therefore help assess whether international clinical and economic evidence is applicable to Abu Dhabi’s population and healthcare system and adjust economic models and projections accordingly.

Further, RWE can support lifecycle-based HTA. Where uncertainty remains after an initial reimbursement decision, post-market evidence can provide additional information to support reassessment and future reimbursement decisions. This creates a more dynamic approach in which evidence continues to inform the value of a technology after market entry and is particularly relevant to Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs), such as cell and gene therapies.

For pharmaceutical and medical technology companies, this evolution highlights the importance of integrating RWE into market access and evidence-generation strategies from an early stage. Collaborating with stakeholders to identify local evidence gaps can help generate data that are relevant to HTA requirements and healthcare-system priorities.

The value of RWE, however, depends on data quality, representativeness, governance and methodological rigor. As Abu Dhabi’s healthcare data infrastructure develops, greater connectivity between clinical records, claims, registries, biobanks and other data sources could strengthen the country’s capacity to generate robust local evidence. Ultimately, the combination of HTA and high-quality RWE has the potential to support a more transparent, sustainable and outcomes-focused healthcare system, while enabling continued access to valuable innovation.