This is the first book to examine challenges in the healthcare sector in the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain). These countries experienced remarkably swift transformations from small fishing and pearling communities at the beginning of the twentieth century to wealthy petro-states today. Their healthcare systems, however, are only now beginning to catch up. Rapid changes to the population and lifestyles of the GCC states have completely changed—and challenged—the region’s health profile and infrastructure. While major successes in combatting infectious diseases and improving standards of primary healthcare are reflected in key health indicators, new trends have developed; increasingly “lifestyle” or “wealthy country” diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, have replaced the old maladies. To meet these emerging healthcare needs, GCC states require highly trained and skilled healthcare workers, an environment that supports local training, state-of-the-art diagnostic laboratories and hospitals, research production and dissemination, and knowledge acquisition. They face shortages in most if not all of these areas. This book provides a comprehensive study of the rapidly changing health profile of the region, the existing conditions of healthcare systems, and the challenges posed to healthcare management across the six states of the GCC.

This book presents the first broad reflection on the challenges, opportunities, and implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Unique results and insights are derived through case studies from diverse disciplines, including engineering, economics, data science, policy-making, governance, and humanscience. Particularly related to these ‘softer’ disciplines, we make some unexplored yet topical contributions to the literature, with a focus on the GCC (but by no means limited to it), including AI and implications for women, Islamic schools of thought on AI, and the power of AI to help deliver wellbeing and happiness in cities and urban spaces. Finally, the readers are provided with a synthesis of ideas, lessons learned, and a path forward based on the diverse content of the chapters. The book caters to the educated non specialist with interest in AI, targeting a wide audience including professionals, academics, government officials, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and non-governmental organizations.

Although most Arab countries remain authoritarian, many have undergone a restructuring of state-society relations in which lower- and middle-class interest groups have lost ground while big business has benefited in terms of its integration into policy-making and the opening of economic sectors that used to be state-dominated. Arab businesses have also started taking on aspects of public service provision in health, media and education that used to be the domain of the state; they have also become increasingly active in philanthropy. The ‘Arab Spring,’ which is likely to lead to a more pluralistic political order, makes it all the more important to understand business interests in the Middle East, a segment of society that on the one hand has often been close to the ancien regime, but on the other will play a pivotal role in a future social contract. Among the topics addressed by the authors are the role of business in recent regime change; the political outlook of businessmen; the consequences of economic liberalisation on the composition of business elites in the Middle East; the role of the private sector in orienting government policies; lobbying of government by business interests and the mechanisms by which governments seek to keep businesses dependent on them.

This book presents an in-depth review on the role of health care financing in improving access for low-income populations to needed care, protecting them from the impoverishing effects of illness, and addressing the important issues of social exclusion in government financed programs.

This volume reviews the public health concerns and challenges specific to the complex Arab world from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Biotechnology can be defined as the manipulation of biological process, systems, and organisms in the production of various products. With applications in a number of fields such as biomedical, chemical, mechanical, and civil engineering, research on the development of biologically inspired materials is essential to further advancement. Biotechnology: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source for the latest research findings on the application of biotechnology in medicine, engineering, agriculture, food production, and other areas. It also examines the economic impacts of biotechnology use. Highlighting a range of topics such as pharmacogenomics, biomedical engineering, and bioinformatics, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for engineers, pharmacists, medical professionals, practitioners, academicians, and researchers interested in the applications of biotechnology.

The Gulf Crisis marks a clear dividing line in the GCC's history reflecting a change in the political, economic, security, social and media realities of the intra-GCC relationship. The question on everyone's mind: will this Crisis be the final nail in the coffin of the Gulf Cooperation Council after nearly four decades?

As technology grows as the largest source of modern economic growth, the emergence of new models is currently challenging the standard western model of organizational management. Companies from all over the world have succeeded in creating emerging economies with these new models and are now competing with established multinational corporations. Organizational Innovation and IT Governance in Emerging Economies develops a methodological framework that supports new approaches of technological innovation by companies. This reference book provides contributions from experts in emerging economies, highlighting specific case studies of home grown companies from these emerging markets, offering lessons on how traditional multinationals can compete with these new companies for policymakers, government officers, academics, researchers, students, and practitioners.